Guy writes:
I think we are all becoming aware of the ‘hungry gap’ - that period in late winter-early spring when birds can struggle to find food and, therefore, it makes a good time for supplementary feeding.
At home we can be found going round our ELS margins with the quad-bike at this time with the slug pellet spinner on the back (cleaned out obviously!) spreading sweepings and tail corn. It’s chilly but rewarding work.
But now I’ve discovered a new ‘gap’ to go with this ‘hungry gap’ which I’ve decided to call ‘the bragging gap’. Most of the year us farmers have something to brag about or gild the lily over - we’ve got alleged harvest yields or lambing percentages or the prices we claim to have sold grain or stock at.
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At other times we’vegot opportunities to ‘big’ ourselves up by showing livestock at Shows or putting the farm into the local Ag Soc’s ‘Best Farm’ competition. But around Easter - before harvest, before the show season and after lambing or when we’ve sold most the grain – it can be difficult to find current opportunities to impress our incredulous neighbours with tales of our latest outstanding achievements.
But fortunately the good old GWCT have come to the rescue here with the Big Farm Bird Count - the results of which they announce around the Easter period during the ‘bragging gap’. It’s at this time we can see how we compare with others when it comes to bird species counted on our farms. Forget about the five tonne to the acre we got in last year’s wheat fields, never mind the constant stream of triplets and twins we got during lambing – now we can make our neighbours jealous by the number and type of bird species we harbour on our farms.
So don’t be surprised if you wander into the pub over the bank holiday to find your neighbour holding forth with lines like “I counted seventeen Dunnocks and that was the best count in the whole of south east England” or “Although we recorded it to the GWCT as just a Buzzard - Buteo Buteo – I’ve got a sneaking felling it might just have been a Rough Legged Buzzard - Buteo Lagapus”.
So remember, the GWCT Big Farm Bird Count - a good chance for us to get out and about on our farms with our binoculars and note pad to see how we compare with the rest.
Don’t just be proud, be loud.
Meanwhile I’m reminded of the time my neighbour came into the pub with his wife and started regaling us with tales of how he’d just got £25 a tonne more than the rest of us for his wheat he’d just sold. To which his wife immediately added in all innocence “and at that price it’s such a shame you only combined thirty tonne of that fifty acre field”.