James Roden, Area Ranger for the National Trust in North Pembrokeshire, is looking for some volunteer bird surveyors help monitor the winter farmland bird populations on some of the National Trust farms across Mid and North Pembrokeshire.The National Trust in the last few years has renewed its focus to improving its land for wildlife. In Pembrokeshire, NT are in the process of implementing a number of changes on our farmland across the county to the benefit of nature. Part of this has been to adjust many of arable systems to spring sown cereals to retain winter stubbles for winter foraging and increasing crop diversity including the use of fallow areas, unsprayed margins and sowing wild bird cover crops. Grasslands are also being improved for wildlife through reducing the amount of herbicides and pesticides used, creating species-rich meadows, prohibiting use of inputs and reseeding on permanent pastures, restoring and protecting hedgebanks and hedgerows, as well as encouraging late summer hay cuts and extensive cattle grazing.To capture the impact these management changes are having on wildlife at NT farms, James has set up a programme of monitoring. As part of this he would like to set up regular monitoring of the farmland bird populations, beginning this winter.What is required of surveyor?We have not finalised the methodology yet, but it will be simple and not too onerous. It is likely to involve walking a set transect across a series of numbered fields, making note of the species and number present in each field. We are aiming for 3 visits per farm, between 1st November 2018 and 28th February 2019.Please see the maps below for the location of the farms. We already have a lot of interest to monitor sites in Mid Pembrokeshire, but need more surveyors for farms in North Pembrokeshire as we only have enough surveyors for Llanferran and Treseissyllt so far.If anyone is interested in helping to survey farmland birds this winter could you please get in touch with myself or James (James.Roden@nationaltrust.org.uk) and state which farm you would be interested in surveying
