With less birdsong in Britain, can you tell your sparrow from your swift?
Growing up in Gloucestershire in the 1970s, Conrad Young could instantly recognise the trill of a yellowhammer in nearby farmland. “We said their call sounded like ‘a little bit of bread and no chee-ee-eese’.”
It is something that few youngsters would hear today. The yellowhammer — a bright-yellow, six-inch-long bunting — lives in hedgerows and, in the winter, feeds on seed and grain spilt during the autumn harvest.
With many hedges replaced by fences, and modern combine harvesters spilling little seed, the population has suffered: since 1967, it has declined by 61 per cent.
Many British farmland birds are seeing similar fates. Pesticides and herbicides have killed the insects and wildflowers they feed on, the switch from hay to silage has removed another food source,
