Hammer Time

The Yellowhammer is a delightful bird with a famous song – but falling population numbers make it increasingly difficult to find.

- Ian Parsons

A LITTLE BIT OF bread and no cheese has to be one of the most well-known renderings of a bird’s song there is. The tumble of short notes (or ‘little bit of bread and no’) followed by the drawn out, wheezy sounding ‘cheese’ at the end, is always a sound I enjoy hearing. It never takes long to spot the singer – conspicuous in habit and appearance.

Sitting on top of a small tree or high up in a hedge, the bright glowing yellow of a Yellowhammer in full song is difficult to miss. Yet this is a bird that has become a lot harder to find in the British countryside in recent times.

Sadly, it is now a Red Listed species in the UK, having declined by more than 50% in the last few decades, a result of the reduction in winter food availability due to modern agricultural methods, with the loss of winter stubble fields being particularly important.