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Alastair Robb

Alistair Robb herding sheep on his farm, in Stirlingshire

The RSPB's Operation Lapwing competition, sponsored by Jordans Cereals, is for farmers who carry out lapwing-friendly farming practices. In 2005, Alastair Robb of Townhead farm near Stirling, was the Scottish winner of the award.

Alastair, a young upland farmer, needed to both improve the quality of his grassland and fatten up lambs on his farm ready for market. He resolved this by combining traditional farming practices with a modern solution. Traditionally, most upland farms would have combined livestock with arable crops. Alastair returned to this approach by finishing his lambs on a leafy fodder crop, Typhon, a Chinese cabbage-turnip hybrid.

The Typhon is cultivated in June, after most lapwing nests have hatched, by disc harrowing or rotovation. This produces an ideal soil surface structure for nesting lapwing the following year. Sheep are put onto the fields to graze periodically throughout autumn and winter. This leaves the ground relatively bare by the end of February – perfect for nesting lapwings.

Following two years in Typhon, the field is then reseeded to grass in June or July of the third year, allowing a third summer for lapwings to breed. Fields under Typhon move around the farm according to the quality of the grass sward.

Since the operation started in 2000, numbers of nesting lapwings have increased from 2 to 67 pairs in 2006. Alastair's farm also has four to five pairs of redshanks, a dozen drumming snipe and around 10 pairs of curlews.

Last modified: 28 February 2008

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