麻豆社

Bill Oddie is looking for stone curlews. Now, the first thing to realise is that this looks like a nice flat field, doesn鈥檛 it, so you think a bird would be obvious. But then you realise that it鈥檚 long like one great big massive sheet of corrugated iron because it鈥檚 full of furrows - and they鈥檙e quite deep. So the bird is in there somewhere, maybe several birds and if they鈥檙e down in those furrows Bill isn't going to see them, unless he scans up the length of the field. He spots one, then another - a female with her wings outstretched. there are two reasons that a bird of this type might do that: one is that they鈥檙e trying to distract a predators since they look as though they鈥檝e got a broken arm, but the other reason is that it鈥檚 sheltering a couple of chicks. And that鈥檚 exactly what it鈥檚 doing and there they are. As well as being well camouflaged and nocturnal stone curlews are notoriously jumpy and shy. That is quite special to actually see a couple of youngsters way out in the open. That鈥檚 a first for Bill, seeing a breeding stone curlew with babies. He sees some more - at this time of the year they do form these little flocks. That鈥檚 a sign of better times, as a hundred years ago there may have been a couple of thousand stone curlews in the country. When Bill first started trying to see them they were getting fewer and fewer. They got down to something like only about a 130 pairs in the whole country. It鈥檚 now up nearer 230 or so. But the majority of them are in Breckland and as it happens, quite a lot of them are on this particular farm because they鈥檙e safe here. One of the things Bill likes about the stone curlew is it is a bird that undoubtedly responds to man creating the right conditions, like on a farm like this. It鈥檚 when conservation can really be shown to work.