Farming in Protected Landscapes Case Study:
Stour Valley Farmer Cluster Species Monitoring Project
Last year, farmers in the Dedham Vale created foraging and feeding plots for turtle doves on their land.
Following on from this work, a grant for £26,852 funded a wide-ranging Acoustic Pipeline Survey over 10 Hectares on 10 farms in the Dedham Vale National Landscape & Stour Valley to monitor for the presence or likely absence of turtle doves and several other key species e.g. nightingale, cuckoo, bats and other small mammals plus bush cricket and moth species.
Why was this project needed?
The Turtle Dove is the UK’s fastest declining bird species. Their gentle “purring” sound used to be familiar in summer time in Suffolk and Essex but it's now rare. They are summer visitors, spending the winter in Sub-Saharan Africa and migrating more than 5,000 km to get there. They undertake a perilous journey and sadly huge numbers are shot on the way to their wintering grounds in Senegal.
To mitigate the decline, fourteen Dedham Vale farms participated in a Farming in
Protected Landscapes project last year to provide bespoke turtle dove plots.
Farmers provided habitat and supplementary feeding over 22 Hectares, following on from the Defra Test & Trial (TDT&T) Project in 2021-23. This project is to monitor the presence or absence of the doves, and provide valuable data on other species such as Red List nightingale, yellowhammer, cuckoo and small mammals including bats.
What work has been done? work has been done?
The project funded 10 detectors, microphones and batteries plus British Trust for Ornithology - a Senior Research Ecologist’s time - for project set up and supervision time and analysis of the results. Preliminary findings from this project were shared with farmers at the Stour Valley Farmer Cluster workshops in June and September 2024, and will feed into Operation Turtle Dove, run by the RSPB.
Data gathered from this project will also provide tangible evidence for the benefits of scrub and ponds for wildlife. Where evidence can be provided to farms to inform the
understanding of the benefits of specific management operations, adoption of beneficial management is more likely.
The project is due to complete in March 2025 and we will record the results here, although so far we are excited to confirm we do have recordings of turtle dove in the Dedham Vale!