Contact: Rosemary Collier

We are very lucky at Wellesbourne to host a small population of corn buntings, which are relatively scarce ground-nesting birds. They have been on our land for many years and we have some historical data on their abundance collected by a past colleague - Joe Hardman. We now have a wonderful volunteer ornithologist who is monitoring them (and the other birds on the site). We also have a Master’s student working on ground nesting birds for her project.

This summer we are trying to assist the corn buntings. We have learnt from another excellent ornithologist based in Wiltshire that the males appreciate song posts to sing and defend their territory and they also like dense barley crops and long grass/vegetation. So, we have tried to provide all three for them – the yellow song posts, some rows of double-sown barley courtesy of our tenant farmer and have left some of the headlands unmown. We think there are/have been about 5 nests in this area – some in the barley and some in the long grass. Fingers crossed.

Corn buntings also visit some of the neighbouring farms and we are (liaising with them through the Arden Farm Wildlife Network of which we are members managed by the Warwickshire Rural Hub and the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust).