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From Kevin Rylands, Farmland Conservation Advisor (South West England) The South West Farmland Bird Initiative (SWFBI) is an exciting partnership project that was set up to specifically help reverse the decline of farmland birds across Wessex. The Initiative targets nationally important farmland bird...

By Nick Tomalin, Wessex Farmland Projects Manager Image courtesy of RSPB Images. Spreading hedge parsley. As an enthusiastic nine year old I was always looking up. Partly this was down to a cheery disposition, partly because I was shorter than everyone else at that age, and partly it was due...

Everybody talks about the long-term decline in farmland bird populations because this group has been effectively monitored for the longest period. But there is a growing list of other important farmland taxa that are being monitored including plants and butterflies. Defra released the 2012 report on...

The current Cornish chough population (six breeding pairs in 2011) is the only one in England, having returned naturally to the Duchy in 2001. There is also a small edge of range population of corn buntings on the north coast of Cornwall and you can now see choughs and corn buntings feeding together...

It’s been a busy few weeks for us here in Wales. The Royal Welsh Show kicked things off back in mid July, the biggest and best attended event of its kind in the UK, with four days of good weather and a huge number of visitors to the stand, so many in fact, we ran out of our increasingly popular...

Well, the wait is over and we finally have our Nature of Farming Award finalists - and I just about have some fingernails left! After much deliberation, our expert panel of judges have announced Robert Law , David White , Robert Kynaston and Somerset & Carolyne Charrington as this year's top...

While everyone else is away at Cereals (my first year off for a while!) I’d like to take a sneaky moment to share some of my joys from last weekend’s bird surveying (and some doubts over next weekend’s surveys on the coast if this weather continues). I’ve been getting snappy...

Any flower-rich habitats on the farm will look at their best over the next few months, both in terms of the spectacle of the flowers themselves and the associated insects, including butterflies and bumblebees, which rely on them. Peter Thompson (Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust) told me that any...