Yellow Hammer

The yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella is a member of the bunting family and a characteristic res ident species of lowland arable and mixed farmland. It is most obvious in spring and summer when the male has a bright yellow head and breast and perches, singing, on the tops of tall bushes, trees and telegraph wires. The nest is close to ground level in dense grass, field margins, ditch vegetation, at the base of thick low hedgerows or in thick scrub (Donaghy, 1998). It can produce up to three broods in a year, nesting until the end of August (Harrison, 1975).

Yellowhammers feed on grain, weed seed and the seeds of large grasses in winter, foraging in cereals, cereal stubbles and crop margins (Donaghy, 1998). In spring and summer adults and chicks feed mainly on invertebrates. In Northern Ireland the range is largely dependant on the presence of cereal fields and the range is fragmented with a stronghold in eastern Co. Down. In the rest of Ireland, yellowhammers are concentrated in the east and south and are generally absent in the west (Coombes et al., 2002). The yellowhammer is largely sedentary (annual range < 5 km) with some local movement in winter in search of food when it may visit farms and villages. In Ireland the annual dispersal range of individuals may be greater due to a shortage of ideal habitat (Lack, 1986).

The yellowhammer was considered to be one of the most common birds in Britain and Ireland in the 19th century (Holloway, 1996). The Atlas of Breeding Birds (Sharrock, 1976) showed that they were still well distributed in the British Isles but had shown some range contraction.

The current estimated population in Northern Ireland is 5,000 pairs (RSPB, pers. comm.). However, extrapolation of winter counts in the late 1990s estimate that the population could be a low as 1,000 territories (G. Henderson, pers. comm.).