A Week on the Estate: Henry’s Insights, Booming Bitterns & Spring Approaches

“I started last September and my first placement was on the commercial side of things with Daria. I got acquainted with the nuts and bolts of the sales process and it was quite interesting. There was a lot of involvement with the distillery too and I learned about licensing. After that, I was one of the three graduate trainees dealing with the pre-Christmas sales campaign. That included working alongside Josh to organise Christmas click & collect. It went really well and it was good to get to know the customers.

“South Ormsby Estate’s customers tend to value quality produce, want to support local growers and traders and care about what the Estate stands for. If I had to pick the main USPs, they’d be locality, premium quality and history. The gins are a good example of this. Burrell’s Dry and Marie-Jeanne Pink Gin are named after real, historical figures and their stories really do resonate with our customers.

“From January to early February, I worked with Paul in Estate Management, mainly covering property, viticulture and arable. It’s a massive job with lots of moving parts. I had a few independent projects, including helping to sort out new sewage treatment facilities at Walmsgate. You have to be very well organised and you’re always looking at the calendar.

“I’ve just moved to marketing and I helped out with the Estate Open Days and Snowdrop Walks. One of my jobs was selling produce in the Old School and we did quite well. Our visitors are a nice, friendly bunch and it’s good to put products in front of people so that they can see and feel them, and you can chat and get acquainted. Gin and soap did very well, and Finn’s Lincoln Red leather roses were very popular in the run-up to Valentine’s Day.

“Next up, I’ll be looking into developing the packaging for the Estate’s own flour and bird seed, as well as refreshing the packaging for the soap. We may sell bird seed at some point in the future but the details have yet to be confirmed. My graduate year finishes in late summer and working in a sales or account management role is where my aim is at the moment.

“South Ormsby Estate is an interesting place to work and I love working with the team here. The graduate scheme compares very well to other graduate jobs. Rather than just working in a very specific role seeing one part of a business, I get to see how everything works. You get to work directly alongside all the managers, seeing how every aspect of the business is run and getting a feel for what suits you best.”

Thanks to Henry for chatting with us. Here are a few more fresh and surprising insights in the form of our monthly BirdWeather update. Regular readers will be aware that not only do we enjoy our vibrant and diverse birdlife as a life-affirming spectacle, but we also use it as an indicator of how well our nature-friendly farming practices are faring.

January’s results are in and here’s the midwinter top ten for BirdWeather activations across South Ormsby Estate:

1.  Rook (16,541) / 2. Blue tit (7,136) / 3. Woodpigeon (5,653) / 4. Jackdaw (5,605)

5. Tawny owl (4,387) / 6. Blackbird (4,085) / 7. Robin (2,740) / 8. Dunnock (2,619)

9. Long-tailed tit (2,529) / 10. Great tit (2,132)

Our tawny owls have been delightfully vocal this winter as they stake out territories and pair up for the breeding season, and have given our more talkative songbirds a run for their money. An honourable mention goes to another raptor, the common buzzard, placing 17^th with 811 activations; these stocky soarers aren’t known for being chatty but can be heard mewing for a mate at certain times of year. At 18^th and 19^th are the redwing and fieldfare with 593 and 482 hits respectively, still making the most of our winter-fruiting shrubs and trees before they return to Scandinavia. The song thrush placed 20^th in January with 265 hits, which is good news for bird-lovers but may be bad news for light sleepers when it begins to get light early.

Another honourable mention goes to the hawfinch. You may recall that Jacqui Rhodes took several good photos of these rare, stocky finches in her garden, and in January they placed 34^th with 54 hits. Of most interest this month, however, is the remarkable number of acoustic hits from a very rare wader. In January’s BirdWeather, the bittern placed 37^th with 50 hits.

The bittern (Botaurus stellaris) is a stocky, buff-brown relative of the grey heron most famous for the male’s resonant, long-range, booming courtship call. Our bittern activations initially seemed too good to be true as this species is amber-listed, mainly because it is highly dependent on mature, extensive reedbeds, a landscape that is unfortunately rarer than it used to be. For those of our readers who’ve tried to observe bitterns, you’ll know that they are masters of camouflage and blend in beautifully with tall reeds. Their plumage is described by the BTO as “cryptic” for this reason.

While we had our doubts, we’re delighted to say that the data looks reliable. Paul Barnes spotted a bittern on neighbouring land on his travels and Josh tells us the acoustic data is “on the money”. We’ve also logged 82 bittern activations in the four weeks to date, all from a single sensor near a watercourse that could be to a bittern’s liking. It’s early days so we can’t say if the bittern is likely to be a permanent resident, but this is still a (cryptic) feather in our cap. We hope to deploy some extra sensors soon to beef up the data, so watch this space for more exciting news.

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