How keepers will nurture change

The radical stewardship revolution brings new opportunities, says Richard Negus

- Richard Negus

Could Flea Barn wash its face financially as a wild bird shoot?” I asked my business partner Richard Gould as we partook of our usual lunchtime break from laying a Flea Barn hedge — philosophising, watching for grey partridges and munching our packed lunches seated on our trucks’ tailgates. His reply was delivered in the usual to-the-point way: “No, we’d need another 500 acres.”

I paused for thought and a mouthful of sausage roll. “Not even if we put a covey or two of greys overpaying Guns?” I persisted.

“No,” Richard responded. “We’ll be grey ourselves before we have a shootable surplus.”

Such is the pragmatism of a wild bird keeper; it is in their nature. There are no guarantees with wild birds: the wrong weather, a loose dog, a rogue badger, and all is for nought. Wild birds have rarely paid the bills.

Move to stewardship

It seemed settled then but I was left wondering, just how expensive it is to create and sustain habitat for wild birds and can such habitat ever pay for itself? Ed Nesling, the farmer who owns Flea Barn, is a fellow pragmatist. He has moved out of the comfort zone of the farming methods he used to use, choosing instead to place well over 20% of his holding into stewardship. This is a financial risk to his business, but one he has taken because he loves this land.

The field of oilseed rape that lies on one side of the hedge where we worked now has a 60m-wide strip of AB8 (flower-rich margins), which pays £539 a hectare, and plots of AB9 (winter bird food mix), paying £640 a hectare and AB11 (cultivated areas for arable plants), paying £532 a hectare.