Birds, Scythes and Combines A History of Birds and Agricultural Change

About this book

First published in 2003, Birds, Scythes and Combines provides an historical perspective to changes in farmland bird populations in Britain over the past 250 years. Despite the scale of change in habitats and agricultural methods in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, early avifaunas show that farmland birds were little affected. Specialised species of fen and marsh were lost, often as much to persecution as habitat destruction, but farmland birds benefited from the appearance of extensive new resources which aided their adaptation to the altered habitats created by the new farming methods. In addition, many old permanent grass habitats were little altered, leaving a major reservoir of important habitats unchanged. By contrast, more modern farming methods, with changes in grassland management, in herbicide use and in harvesting methods particularly, have led to a collapse in the diversity of farmland and a consequent steep decline in the population size of a high proportion of farmland birds.

Contents

Introduction
Acknowledgements

1. The agricultural background
2. The farmland birds
3. Arable farming systems: high farming and before
4. Enclosure
5. Some thoughts on hedges
6. Drainage
7. Weeds, weeding and pesticides
8. Arable farming systems: after 1945
9. Grassland and stock
10. Winter food resources
11. Labour, machines and buildings
12. Exploitation
13. Conclusions

Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography and references
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Michael Shrubb is a retired farmer with a lifelong interest in birds which he has been studying since the late 1950s.