Wholecrop silage with unharvested conservation headlands has been used on a farm in Cumbria to provide valuable fodder for the stock and reintroduce an arable element to the system, which provides seed food for farmland birds.

At Hazelmere Farm in Creswell, Derbyshire, the farmer has used ELS and HLS to ensure plenty of seed food for farmland birds and created fallow plots to improve the amount of nesting habitat for lapwings. He is looking to create additional flower-rich margins to complete the farmland bird package by ensuring that there is sufficient insect-rich habitat for birds to feed their chicks

The RSPB has been trialling wild bird cover crops in north-east Scotland to conserve the remaining population of corn buntings. Two-year mixes did not feed corn buntings in the second year, so the Project now only uses annual mixtures including a mix of triticale, barley and oats. This mix provides grain throughout the winter. Corn buntings have increased in areas where these mixtures have been used, but continued to decline in areas without cover crops.

Wet grassland restoration on this site has been achieved through the creation of shallow foot drains and scrapes using the RSPB's Rotary Ditcher. The resulting increase in breeding wader populations includes the first nesting redshank in the cherwell catchment since 1982.

John Moir has successfully helped the corn buntings breeding on his mixed farm in Aberdeenshire by delaying cutting on his less productive grass fields used by nesting birds.

Nicholas Watts has successfully used cultivated margins on his farm in the Lincolnshire Fens to boost insect food for birds. The diversity of wildlife on these margins is unparalleled by any other habitat on the farm.

Nicholas Watts has created and maintained flower-rich margins on his farm for 15 years, which he believes are a much better option for wildlife than the standard grass margins.

Management to reduce rush cover and increase the wet features present on this site in Lancashire has benefitted lapwings, curlews, redshank and snipe. The improved grazing condition has also benefitted the economics of the livestock enterprise.

An area of permanent set-aside has been managed by cultivating a third of the area each year on a 3-year rotation to increase the floristic diversity and wildlife benefits.

Chris Barnes reverts 40ha of unproductive arable land to wet grassland using Higher Level Stewardship and overcomes problems of poor grassland establishment to create an invertebrate-rich grassland that has immediately attracted high wintering numbers of waders and should attract breeding waders in the near future.