Yellowhammer on the red list
So where is that ‘little bit of bread and no cheese’?
There was a time when every hedgerow in this airt seemed to echo to the little ditty of the yellowhammer, especially at this time of the year.
When most other birds had fallen silent those lone voices rang out, continuing to pronounce territorial integrity and perhaps the hatching of late broods of youngsters. Yellowhammers always seemed to extend their breeding season well into those weeks when most other birds had curtailed their breeding ambitions.
While during the winter I was occasionally visited by a handful of yellowhammers, there has been no evidence of their presence at all during spring and summer.
For some reason yellowhammers hereabouts seem to be among the worst affected of the farmland birds, which in general are struggling for survival. Over recent years there has been a catastrophic decline in all farmland birds, to such an extent that Rachel Carson’s predictions in her famous tome ‘Silent Spring’ all those years ago seem ominously close at hand. Poor old yellow yite or yorling.
But yellowhammers have always been under pressure. The contention that the yellowhammer consumes a drop of the De’il’ s blood every May Day morning prompted a universal dislike of the wee bird in some quarters of the Highlands and young boys were encouraged to take and destroy their eggs.
The Highland interpretation of the bird’s call, ‘Whittle te, whittle te, whee! Harry my nest and the De’il tak ye’, added further malaise with the suggestion that the bird actually sounded like the Devil. The bird’s dubious reputation was exacerbated further by more superstitions related to the weird markings on its eggs, a curious red scribblelike scrawl which were described as ‘writings’. These, it was claimed by some soothsayers, might disclose the initials of a future lover.
All this legend flies in the face of the fact that the yellowhammer is a very striking bird, the male in its full breeding plumage the possessor of the brightest of yellow heads, fully justifying its pseudonym of the Scotch canary.
The female is a little less flamboyant, its yellow head markings being rather more diffuse and broken but attractive nonetheless. Both male and female possess attractively streaked russet plumage on the back and prominent chestnut rumps.
The yellowhammer is a seed-eater, albeit that it supplements its youngsters’ diet with a selection of invertebrates. The adult birds feed extensively on stubble fields in the winter and upon the seeds of weeds at other times of the year – and this may be the problem.
Modern, more intensive farming ensures that the landscape is a good deal tidier than it used to be, hence a scarcity of weeds. Where arable farming predominates herbicides and pesticides are widely used. Scrub, a favoured nesting site for many birds such as the yellowhammer, is removed, as are hedgerows. In such regions there is also a
declining population of raptors such as sparrowhawks, which are the most likely predators on yellowhammers.
Hereabouts, where mixed farming dominates, there is no sign at all of an alleged proliferation of raptors, with few hawks and no kestrels at all. I’m afraid the ‘too many’ brigade, who blame raptors for the decrease in farmland birds, are barking up the wrong tree.
A survey conducted this year by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust revealed that among the most commonly seen 25 birds was but one raptor, the buzzard. The most commonly seen birds were the blackbird and the wood-pigeon. The yellowhammer, once so commonplace, was seen by only 30 per cent of the farmers surveyed.
Yellowhammer numbers have fallen by 50 per cent during just the last 25 years in Britain. It is now a red listed bird, recognised as being under real threat.
I do not blame farmers for modernising in their efforts to stay afloat but the facts are staring us in the face. If the problem is raptors the sky would soon be empty of them as prey species decline.
Meanwhile, I mourn the absence of that little bit of bread and no cheese. The one spark of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel is that future financial rewards to farmers may well be paid for improving habitats for wildlife. Good for farmers, good for wildlife.