Southfields Farm, Coleshill.

Another great to visit to Souhfields Farm in Coleshill today, this time for a winter farmland bird walk courtesy of Tame Valley Wetlands and experts from Natural England and of course the owner of the land, 'John The Farmer'.

As I've stated on many occasions before this location is a wonderful place for the wildlife and John does outstanding work creating ideal habitats for everything from the birds and butterflies right down to Hares and encouraging insects to the farm to create an ideal location for all of our great birds, insects, flora and fauna that we are lucky enough to have in this country.

If you've read this blog before you'll already know that I love the humble House Sparrow and I've said before that this location is replete with many of these wonderful and charismatic birds, so it was great to hear John say that their numbers have gone back to their 1960 levels, they are literally all around the farms outbuildings, always a pleasure to see and hear them.

Like I said beforehand John does a great job on the farm for the birds which ranges from creating the right habitats for them all year around such as cutting, leaving them alone at the appropriate times and creating new hedgerows for nesting birds and creating fallow fields for nesting Lapwing and Skylark in the summer, planting bird friendly crops such as kale, linseed and oilseed rape for birds such as Linnet, Redpoll and Thrushes and providing them with much needed supplementary food in the Autumn/Winter months and creating a huge wildflower meadow field which really is something else to see when it's in full flow in late Spring, with wildflowers such as Common Knapweed, Musk Mallow, Field Scabious, Cornflower, Birds-Foot Trefoil, Oxeye Daisy and Field Poppy present in large numbers.

Highlight of today was seeing so many Yellowhammer with forty to fifty seen in total, about ten were seen at the beginning of the walk by the first path where supplementary food is located and a up to c.30 located on the second path near the end of the walk, other birds seen taking advantage of this much needed food source were, Reed Bunting, Dunnock, Robin, House Sparrow, Greenfinch and even the odd Magpie, also seen flying overhead was a small flock of Linnet and three Buzzard circling high above in one field and another two Buzzard in an adjacent field. I didn't see a wide variety of birds as I have seen on previous visits but if you saw the same birds every time you went out, where would the fun be in that ? But it was still nice to see plenty of Tits, Finches, Redwing and of course Yellowhammers, House Sparrows, Linnets and Reed Buntings.

Birds seen today were, Buzzard, Yellowhammer, Linnet, Reed Bunting, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long Tailed Tit, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, House Sparrow, Dunnock, Robin, Redwing, Blackbird, Jackdaw, Carrion Crow and Magpie.

I hope you've all enjoyed reading this entry to the blog especially you John, you do great work, keep it up !