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Operation Tree Sparrow is soaraway success
26 January 2012
The once rare tree sparrow is beginning to thrive again in the north west thanks to farmers’ involvement in a conservation project aimed at boosting numbers of the farmland bird.
Operation Tree Sparrow
was set up by the RSPB in 2004 to help boost numbers of the bird whose UK population has decreased by over 90% since the 1970s. Farmers were encouraged to manage part of their land to help the bird by providing winter food supplies and suitable nesting sites, with hundreds of feeding stations and nest boxes established.
Many of the farmers involved in the project signed up to Environmental Stewardship and applied beneficial management options including sowing wild-bird seed mixture with seed bearing plants such as kale and millet for winter food and providing undersown spring cereals, cultivated margins, or nectar flower mixtures to offer insect-rich foraging habitats. These measures also benefit other species of farmland bird such as curlew, grey partridge and skylark and research shows that farmland bird populations can respond positively and quickly when these simple measures are put in place.
As a result of Operation Tree Sparrow which ran from 2004 to 2011, several participating farms recorded large increases in the number of tree sparrows present.
Read the RSPB Operation Tree Sparrow press release
More info on Farming for Birds
