Countryfile

Leicestershire (27x6)

Air date: Feb 08, 2015

Ellie Harrison is in Leicestershire reporting on the drastic decline in farmland birds. She joins the farmers learning how to spot rare birds and hears how they are creating the right habitat for wild birds back on their farms. Ellie then visits an alpaca farm where the animals are not being bred for their valuable fleeces or even their meat but for use in therapy for people with mental health problems. Over the border in Rutland, Matt Baker tells that wetland birds are in decline too. He joins the volunteers on Rutland Water, helping to survey the migrant bird population and lending a hand to restore the habitat of one of Britain's rarest wetland species, the bittern. See what Adam Henson is doing to encourage wild birds back onto his farm. He is joined by wildlife cameraman Richard Taylor Jones to see if they can catch a glimpse of rare corn buntings, once common in the Cotswolds but now seriously in decline. Wind turbines - love them or hate them, they now produce so much electricity every year that we have to pay millions of pounds to turn them off. So is it time to stop building onshore turbines? Tom Heap finds out.