However, it may be equally true of a rural site if surrounding fields support intensive types of agriculture with heavy pesticide and herbicide use. Burial grounds are, of course, usually relatively small compared to the area used by a highly mobile creature like a bird, and will act as production and dispersal sites, ‘seeding’ the surrounding areas with more unusual species. They will also receive incomers from poorer habitats, so that what constitutes a ‘churchyard bird’ will depend as much on the surroundings as the characteristics of the churchyard itself.
On this list alone, there are nine species on the Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern and eleven on the Amber List – clearly burial grounds have the potential for nurturing some of our more threatened bird species while supporting healthy populations of our commoner, much-loved species. As such, they are in need of protection and improvement.
Burial grounds are frequently quiet and undisturbed habitats, ideal for nesting and rearing young. They are also often stable ecosystems (many having been unchanged for centuries) with ancient trees and pastures, and have escaped the excesses of fertiliser and herbicide use characteristic of farmed land and even gardens. They typically have mature tree cover, both native and exotic, broad-leafed and conifer, with tree groupings, hedges and sometimes a shrub understorey. All of these provide a variety of food sources and nest sites. A mixture of tree types is valuable to birds that raise several broods in a breeding season, which start early and may use a conifer as a nesting site for the first nest, when deciduous trees are leafless, and may switch later in the season.
