Seagulls

As a competition ploughmen with a degree in agriculture and a lifetime of experience in various agronomic capacities I can assure you that seagulls love earthworms but there are very few in arable land today. Despite the modern trend to incorporate green crops and organic matter in the form of straw, earthworms don`t like living in concrete. They prefer to move through the top eighteen inches of soil in order to satisfy their needs for moisture and organic material. The passage between the strata is now severely restricted. Not only are seagulls a bellweather but so also moles. How many moles do you see in arable land ? We are destroying our soils with minimal till and horrendously heavy machinery. 300hp and fifteen tonnes of tractor on a four leg subsoiler are not the answer or the salvation. Until the short termists can get this between their ears agriculture production is on a downward trend. We are running out of economical and eco friendly quick fixes so better wake up before it is too late.

I think competition ploughing is great. Is part of our heritage and its a form of landscape art.
 

Roy_H

Member
As a competition ploughmen with a degree in agriculture and a lifetime of experience in various agronomic capacities I can assure you that seagulls love earthworms but there are very few in arable land today. Despite the modern trend to incorporate green crops and organic matter in the form of straw, earthworms don`t like living in concrete. They prefer to move through the top eighteen inches of soil in order to satisfy their needs for moisture and organic material. The passage between the strata is now severely restricted. Not only are seagulls a bellweather but so also moles. How many moles do you see in arable land ? We are destroying our soils with minimal till and horrendously heavy machinery. 300hp and fifteen tonnes of tractor on a four leg subsoiler are not the answer or the salvation. Until the short termists can get this between their ears agriculture production is on a downward trend. We are running out of economical and eco friendly quick fixes so better wake up before it is too late.
The late and (He thought he was ) great Peter Hepworth used to plough his land during the night so there would be no gulls to steal the earthworms.
 

bovrill

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
East Essexshire
So nearly every arable farmer in Essex has been ploughing or deep cultivating every day for the past few weeks, but guess where all the seagulls have been.
View attachment 577186
This is my oat stubble that was drilled with a cover crop about three weeks ago. They appeared in the field as soon as I arrived with the drill and haven't left since, every single day they are there, from daybreak till dusk. Pretty amazing that this undisturbed field can sustain thousands of birds for all that time, and that there are tractors turning over soil all around, even just over the road, and they don't bother to go and look.

John Landers suggested to me recently that as the government is so keen on paying farmers to leave beetle
banks across their field, it ought to pay no-till farmers a small fortune, our whole farms are beetle banks!
Do you want to borrow my dog? He won't let a seagull land while I'm cultivating, probably sending them down to you!
The downside is that with all his running around, he's eating nearly 6lbs of meat a day and making a hole in his ad-lib bowl of dry biscuit too.
 

bovrill

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
East Essexshire
Buzzards don't bother the gulls here, they prefer leverets, grey partridge, lapwing chicks, and everything else that "the farmers" get the blame for the decline of.
I watched a single buzzard take a black headed gull from behind the cultivator last autumn. There were a couple of minutes battle with the other gulls after the initial take-down, then the buzzard dragged it's kill into a wood about 300 yards away.
I actually parked up and got the flask out to sit and watch it!
 

Roy_H

Member
I watched a single buzzard take a black headed gull from behind the cultivator last autumn. There were a couple of minutes battle with the other gulls after the initial take-down, then the buzzard dragged it's kill into a wood about 300 yards away.
I actually parked up and got the flask out to sit and watch it!
Dad and l once saw a kestrel (And yes it was a kestrel not a sparrowhawk) carrying off a male blackbird one day. We were both amazed as we thought they only hunted much smaller mammalian prey such as mice, voles etc. not birds. In fact you could see that the kestrel was struggling to carry it .
 
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Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Anyone notice the irony of discussing competition ploughing in a DD discussion :)

Err, I was trying to be controversial with my earlier comments about straw & baling - I'll have to try harder . . .
 

Simon C

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Essex Coast
Do you want to borrow my dog? He won't let a seagull land while I'm cultivating, probably sending them down to you!
The downside is that with all his running around, he's eating nearly 6lbs of meat a day and making a hole in his ad-lib bowl of dry biscuit too.
Thanks for the offer, but no thanks if it's all the same to you.

The point is that these gulls are not eating worms because the soil is undisturbed and they are not digging down to find them. Seagulls eat pretty much anything so there must be a lot of other soil life on or near the surface that they can get at. Fair flock of rooks on there every day as well.
 

bovrill

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
East Essexshire
Thanks for the offer, but no thanks if it's all the same to you.

The point is that these gulls are not eating worms because the soil is undisturbed and they are not digging down to find them. Seagulls eat pretty much anything so there must be a lot of other soil life on or near the surface that they can get at. Fair flock of rooks on there every day as well.
Damn, I thought I might find someone else to cover his feeding for a few days!
 

haggard143

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Norfolk
The late and (He thought he was ) great Peter Hepworth used to plough his land during the night so there would be no gulls to steal the earthworms.
I Have heard this, i was told of someone near yarmouth would plough at night to avoid the gulls taking all the worms, i thought i was being wound up
 

haggard143

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Norfolk
Dad and l once saw a kestrel (And yes it was a kestrel not a sparrowhawk) carrying off a male blackbird one day. We were both amazed as we thought they only hunted much smaller mammalian prey such as mice, voles etc. not birds. In fact you could see that the kestrel was struggling to carry it .
doing silage a kestrel dropped behind me and took a mouse/vole out of nowhere a red kite came and grabbed both it was quite a catch:eek:
 

arcobob

Member
Location
Norfolk
Anyone notice the irony of discussing competition ploughing in a DD discussion :)

Err, I was trying to be controversial with my earlier comments about straw & baling - I'll have to try harder . . .
There is a forum on here about competition ploughing to which I often contribute. The only reasons I mentioned it on here is the fact that competition ploughmen spend a lot of time observing soil being turned over from close quarters and slow speed and secondly it is not uncommon to have to abandon the plot because the land is so compacted in places that vintage ploughs will not operate. These areas of extreme compaction are usually wheelings that are no longer visible because subsequent shallow operations have masked them.
 

Ruston3w

Member
Location
south suffolk
Thanks for the offer, but no thanks if it's all the same to you.

The point is that these gulls are not eating worms because the soil is undisturbed and they are not digging down to find them. Seagulls eat pretty much anything so there must be a lot of other soil life on or near the surface that they can get at. Fair flock of rooks on there every day as well.

Do you see any Godwit with them? We have a flock which are mostly amongst gulls , only on barley stubble.
Bird folks tell me young Godwits have soft beaks, easier to pick soft barley (we left plenty!) than dig in the mud.
Sometimes they are just away from gulls, or all amongst, no idea why they have suddenly become partial to barley
 

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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