Cornabus Farm

Scottish Oxpecker

Farmers are totally perplexed 1950-1990 cheap food 1990-2010 oh shit that crashes nature 2016 green BREXIT 2020-23 public goods for public £ 2024 not quite enough £ 2025 we’ve lost interest - can you do cheap food and nature with no funding? This wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card

Sparrows have decided we can't use the squeeze on the cattle crush this nesting season!

@CliveMcKay1 This dry spring has really focussed the nesting attempts to the wettest bits. A lot of their usual wettish grassland sites unoccupied since early April. Also very protracted with a couple of new nests started last few days

@CornabusFarm nice muddy edge!

Day 5 for this brood of four lapwing chicks.. still going strong! #waderweek

And this morning's heifer calf out of Gigha, AI to Firefox of Upsall

This morning's beautiful beef shorthorn heifer calf. Out of Dunsyre Venus Opal 28th AI'd to Sandwick Prefer-a-bull. Samara's first AI success!

@KaneBrides David feeling a bit grizzly is he?

Snuggled in a sleeping bag in a hut deep inside an Estonian forest after a great evening watching Brown bears! We can hear them splashing around in water outside, just meters from our beds!! A Ural owl calling too!

What every livestock farmer should hope to see when turning over a cowpat! Massive Geotrupes dung beetle burrow. Nutrient cycling dreamland.

@LowAuldgirth A leaky dam or two would go great in there!

This is what four years of not looking after a drainage channel looks like. A wiggly, weed filled habitat is forming. And it’s only going to get better…

Greenland White-fronts leaving Islay on a NW flightline over my house this morning. This is the only time that they fly over in this direction in any numbers. Volume up.

@CliveMcKay1 @barrabirder Irish birds tend to leave a bit earlier than ours Clive. Mine still have a way to go to get body condition to where it needs to be really. Our telemetry birds tend to move end of the first week of April onwards

@barrabirder Haven't *seen* any leaving Islay yet Bruce, but good SE tailwind forecast for Mon/Tues should see some action...

Greenland White-fronted Geese are on the move. We had a very noisy flock circling high over Loch Tangasdale for 5 minutes this afternoon, seemingly hesitant to head back out to sea in the gale. They dropped back to the south in the end. Wise move!

@beefshorthorn @PrecisionGraze Thank you very much!

@CornabusFarm @PrecisionGraze This is the Kiwitech drag trough from @PrecisionGraze

Unbelievable scenes! 🤩 @PrecisionGraze

To grow food, we need nature. The UK Government must increase investment in nature friendly farming. #NatureCantWait Sign and share the petition. action.rspb.org.uk/page/156168/pe…

@_Stickybeak As if on cue, redshank back now!

@_Stickybeak Spot on! Need redshank to return and then that's our full house. Steadily increasing from just 3 prs lapwing and similar numbers of snipe 5 years ago

Barnacle geese arriving in to the fields this morning. Alongside 3 other goose spp, 4 spp duck, 4 spp of wader displaying (🤞redshank back any day now too). 33 whoppers heading North overhead. Waiting on our first real spring migrants to arrive (LBB gulls barely count!)

@_Stickybeak Need to get over there one day soon! Look at Rathlin every day and never been...

@CornabusFarm That's brilliant, well done! Rathlin has Oystercatchers and Snipe nesting, and historically Lapwings but not for a good few years now. We hope one day they might re-establish themselves but we get relatively few visiting here currently.

@NatureNorthEast 27 curlew is good for this time of year.. hopefully some new recruits. Are yours back on territory?

@NatureNorthEast That wall along the track is my go to for an early wheatear!