Corn bunting
Miliaria calandra
The corn bunting is a small, dumpy, grey/brown bird with a persistent jangling song and a distinctive feet-dangling flight. It is one of the characteristic resident species of lowland arable farmland and is one of the few British species largely dependent on cropped land. It has a diet of seeds and plant material and this is supplemented by insects during the breeding season.
In the UK its distribution is fragmented, with the bulk of the population found across southern and eastern England but with small outlying groups as far away as Cornwall, the Outer Hebrides and north-east Scotland. Its numbers and distribution have been declining in some areas since the beginning of the twentieth century and steadily in most places since the early 1970s. The results of the Common Bird Census suggest that there was a 76% decline in the breeding population between 1968 and 1991. In addition there was a decrease in a range of 32% between the two breeding atlas periods (1968-72 and 1988-91). The Farmland Bunting Survey by the British Trust for Ornithology in 1993 recorded only around 20,000 territories remaining in Britain. The species remains common and widespread in southern Europe. It is a UK Biodiversity Action Plan priority species.
In the Tees Valley area the corn bunting is a scarce and localised resident with an estimated population of 10-20 pairs. Flocks are found at different locations in different years which have included Dalton Piercy, Boulby, and Naisberry in recent years.
