SHERFORD LAUNCHES PROTECT SHERFORD’S SKYLARKS CAMPAIGN
Eight new signs have gone up across Sherford's Country Park as part of a new campaign to protect one of Britain's most-loved — and most threatened — birds.
The Protect Sherford’s Skylarks initiative asks residents and visitors using the park to keep dogs on short leads, stick to marked paths and avoid areas of long grass during the nesting season, which runs from March through to August.
Skylarks are ground-nesting birds, meaning their eggs and chicks are hidden directly in the grass — invisible to most walkers, but vulnerable to disturbance from dogs and people straying off the path. Even a single disturbance can be enough to cause a nest to fail.
The skylark is on the UK's Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern, with numbers having fallen by more than half since the 1970s. Sherford's Country Park was designed as part of the development to provide suitable open grassland habitat for farmland birds including skylarks, and the new campaign aims to make the most of that investment by reducing disturbance during the critical breeding period.
One particular area, known as Skylark Field, has already been identified as supporting breeding birds and is highlighted on the new signage as a particular area to treat with care. The nesting season runs from March to August, with peak sensitivity in spring and early summer when eggs and chicks are on the ground.
The Sherford Consortium is encouraging everyone who uses the Country Park to look out for the new signs and follow their guidance. Skylarks are famously associated with their extraordinary song-flight — males rise almost vertically from the ground, singing continuously for up to an hour at heights of up to 300 metres — but despite those aerial performances, they nest entirely on the ground, which is what makes them so susceptible to disturbance.
