It’s a winter evening and I’m stumbling around a stubble field in Braddan in the dark.
In front of me a man in dark clothing is brandishing a net and carrying a high-power lamp which has yet to be switched on. The sound of running water is playing from a recording device at his side.
It’s not my normal Friday night.
I’m accompanying Rob Fisher, farmland birds recovery officer at Manx Wildlife Trust, as he carries out night-time monitoring of a precious wildlife habitat which is fast disappearing in the Isle of Man.
Stubble fields were once a common sight here. Traditionally, cereals were mainly grown in the spring with the crop harvested in autumn and left as stubble over winter.
But horticultural advances in recent decades mean that now fields can be used for winter cereal or fodder crops rather than being left as stubble.
Rob explained their importance for wildlife: ‘Stubble fields provide both a fantastic food source and a safe place for our declining farmland birds like skylark, jack snipe, common snipe and woodcock, meadow pipits, redwing and fieldfare.
Rob rings a captured skylark (Media IoM)
‘There is spilt grain on the bare soil along with nutrient-rich seeds of arable wildflowers. Inside the stubble stems are hibernating invertebrates.’
His survey is being carried out under the auspices of the British Trust for Ornithology – and also provides a wealth of information for the farmers.
Since 2021, farmers are now able to apply for grants from the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture’s Agri-Environment Scheme to support the nature-friendly management of such transient habitats.
Birds are captured safely, popped in a bag and then carefully given a lightweight metal ring on their leg with a unique number. They are studied for biometrics including age, sex, weight and wing measurement before being released.
The techniques used to catch the birds go back centuries, but with a modern twist thanks to the benefit of the latest technology.
Rob explained: ‘It’s called dazzling and was first developed for woodcock. Bird ringers would go out with a torch and a net. Because the woodcock’s eye is so big, the light from it would shine back, and they would see the glint. It’s very clever.’
Rob is carrying a thermal imager with a range finder and an iPad on which the positions of the creatures all around us are revealed.
Once he spots a bird, shown as a white heat spot on his iPad screen, he creeps up to it, the crackle of the stubble underfoot drowned out by playing the recorded sound of running water.
Rob expertly brings down the net and our first bird of the evening is safely bagged – a red-listed skylark, which is a specially protected species in the Isle of Man.
Conditions on the night were good with no rain and not cold. ‘You can see there is a bit of light pollution coming from Douglas. But it’s not so bad,’ said Rob.
Under the Agri-Environment Scheme, farmers can now get payments for leaving these beneficial stubble fields in situ and unsprayed until mid-February. Farmyard manure cannot be spread upon them until then to avoid drawing in gulls and crows.
Up to £40 an acre is available for the first 10 acres, up to £20 an acre for the next 10 to 20 acres and £10 an acre for over 20 acres.
The purpose is to provide the perfect foraging and feeding areas for birds such as skylark, flocks of finches, our critically endangered tree sparrows and other target species such as the red-listed stock dove.
Rob said the nocturnal surveys are a good way to justify these payments under the Agri-Environment Scheme.
This particular field in Mount Rule was identified last year for the wealth of its wildlife by David Bellamy, head of conservation and land for Manx Wildlife Trust and previously the charity’s agri-environment officer.
Rob said: ‘We walked along here looking for tree sparrows, which was another one of my projects. And as we walked down this path we flushed over 100 skylark during the day from this stubble field. This is an extraordinary number for the Isle of Man.
‘It made me think if they’re here through the day in these numbers, what’s it like at night?’
Rob said he had flushed a jack snipe in the same field and then two more in the pools on the far side.
Jack snipe are uncommon winter visitors usually arriving around September. But they are very difficult to see given their camouflage and predilection for skulking in dense vegetation.
Rob said: ‘A common snipe, when it’s flushed, does a little bark and flies away into the distance. However, jack snipe will fly up, rarely call, and will drop down again only about 20 metres or so in front of you. They don’t go very far, which is a tell-tale sign of identification.
‘Common snipe will fly away when you’re within 15 metres or so. However, jack snipe are so reluctant to fly that they won’t flush until they’re pretty much between your legs. If you keep walking, they might not even fly at all. They will sit on the edge of a small puddle or pool picking up invertebrates. During dazzling for some reason, they’re not bothered by the light, whereas common snipe will typically fly instantly.’
He said jack snipe particularly favour water-filled ruts left by tractor tyres.
‘When a tractor leaves a divot in the field, when water collects in that, that is all that jack snipe needs. It will just come and feed there,’ he explained.
‘The pools are really shallow and all the invertebrates that are in the stubble get caught in the water and congregate at the side of the pool. Waders then have access to food and because it’s shallow they don’t have to go too deep.’
Jack snipe at Kerrowmooar, Sulby (David Bellamy)
One of the Agri-Environment initiatives for grant payments is to install shallow scrapes onto farmland in areas that aren’t being used in winter to provide food security and habitat for waders.
Rob was a warden on the Calf for two years for 2020 and 2021, during which time he qualified as a bird ringer.
Since 2020 he has ringed just over 10,000 birds and handled about 13,000.
Among the rarities he’s ringed are barred warbler and subalpine warbler. He’s also ringed a buzzard and an adult peregrine. ‘That was very special,’ he said.
Sadly, there were no rarities to be ringed that night, and no sign of the target species of jack snipe and woodcock.
Back at his 4×4, recently donated to MWT’s farmland birds work by a private donor, Rob processes the birds he’s bagged in the space of just over an hour – three skylarks.
After being measured and tagged, the skylarks seem reluctant to leave the warmth of Rob’s hand – but with an encouraging nudge they take flight and are lost in the darkness once more.
A skylark ready to be released (Media IoM)