Some top prizes are up for grabs if you take part in the 2024 Big Farmland Bird Count.
The GWCT are asking for farmers, gamekeepers and land and wildlife managers to spend 30 minutes on a patch of land recording the number of species they see between 2-18 February.
Once their results are submitted, participants will be entered into a prize draw where they could win one of these outstanding prizes kindly donated to by our sponsors.
Kings Crops
The prize winner will have the choice of a £500 voucher to purchase seed for winter bird food plots OR a 500kg bag of supplementary feed, all mixes supplied by Kings Crops.
Winter bird food plots
If the winner elects to have the winter bird food plots voucher, they will receive advice from their local Kings Crops advisor on which mix suits them best as well as tips on establishment and ongoing management. The choice of mixtures can be either of the following:
- Campaign Mix: Straightforward and effective – a great annual mix for broadleaved weed control
- Contains: barley, red, white and reed millet, triticale, linseed, fodder radish and wheat
- Take-Off Mix: Combines effective weed control with a diverse range of plant species. Delivers feed and cover over two years
- Contains: Coleor kale, fodder radish, Stand and Deliver (perennial chicory), Gold of Pleasure, linseed, Kings Milo (dwarf sorghum), red millet, triticale, white millet and Utopia.
This prize can be delivered in May of this year and should be established in late May/Early June.
Supplementary feed
If the winner chooses the 500kg of supplementary feed, they’ll also receive advice from their local Kings Crops advisor on variety selection to meet potential environmental and stewardship requirements. They’ll have the option to choose a bespoke mix tailored to their specific needs, which ranges from small seed pre-mixes to full mixes including the cereal element, as well as straight raw materials if they plan to mix their own seed.
Perdix
Six prizes from Perdix will be raffled among participants.
- 1 x Compact Trail Camera
- 2 x Perdix Bird Nesting Boxes
- 3 x Perdix Farmland Feeders
We are members of Blyth Valley Cluster in Suffolk with Facilitation funding with Suffolk WT
I have just submitted my count but I was dismayed to see that I had to fill out an online form and rewrite all of my findings. I assumed when completing my record sheet that all I had to do was scan the thing and email a copy to you, this would have been much simpler for me. I had written some things on my sheet which you now cannot read because of the online form. I wanted to say that I have birds on the farm which were not seen during the 30 minutes of the survey, tawny owls, sparrow hawk, pied wagtail, flock of starlings, english partridge and woodcock. I also wanted to say that in the past we had twenty pairs of house sparrows nesting in our roof, last year probably six and this year none. I cannot understand the reason as we have done nothing different, maybe the sparrow hawk has had them, we never had a sparrow hawk until my neighbour planted conifers as nurse trees for his oak plantation, the conifers were never thinned out so we have nearby an excellent nesting site for sparrow hawks as I am led to believe that thick conifers is their preferred home.