Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) Photo By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38974913

Dear Readers, the yellowhammer is the quintessential farmland bird, but over the past decades it’s been disappearing from the countryside – I outline some of the reasons in my post here. But here’s some good news! In my earlier post, I mention Hope Farm, which is owned by the RSPB, and which has been doing some excellent work to help to bring back this species.

It started off by creating more hedgerows and leaving insect-rich boundaries at the edge of fields – this resulted in a doubling of the yellowhammer population, but the main problem seemed to be poor winter survival, not just in the farm but in a much wider area. Changes in farming practices have meant that there’s much less food available for all sorts of farmland birds during the winter months, so Hope Farm, along with a number of other farms, have started supplementary seed feeding over the coldest time of year. This draws in farmland birds from a much wider area. When the programme started, it was unusual to see more than 9 or 10 yellowhammers, but in recent years numbers have climbed to an average of 200, with a peak count of 723, which is a tremendous success.

Yellowhammers have also benefitted from the statutory requirement to leave hedge-trimming until 1st September – this species breeds late, and can be actively rearing young as late as August.

Let’s hope that more of us will soon be able to hear the distinctive ‘little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese’ call of the yellowhammer. I’m not sure I can actually hear that sentence in the call – it sounds more like somebody very cross berating a waiter to me. But as the male bird can utter this phrase 3000 times per day during the breeding season, I imagine it soon gets a bit monotonous even to the yellowhammer. Here’s a recording of a French yellowhammer  by Martin Billard.

And is it too early to remind everybody in the UK about the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch on 23-25th January 2026? Personally I can’t believe that it’s almost that time again, but here we are. This annual event has collected so much useful information on birds and their population trends over the past decades, and it’s well worth supporting.