The B1042 that winds from the Bedfordshire town of Sandy towards the village of Potton is a difficult road to cross. Fast and twisty, there are several blind bends where pedestrians must take their lives into their hands. That is trickier than it sounds, for most pedestrians who cross the B1042 already have a pair of binoculars in their hands.

The road separates the grand headquarters of the RSPB, home to hundreds of birdwatchers, from some unkept fields, home to hundreds of watchable birds - hence the regular skips across the tarmac.

The skips, though, are now less regular for many RSPB staff, for the star attraction of the neighbouring fields has flown. Until a year ago, a clutch of woodlark nested there, one of Britain's rarest birds with just 1,000 or so thought to remain. Then their home was ploughed up and replaced with a giant field of swaying hemp plants. The woodlark have not been seen since.

It is not just the professional birdwatchers of the RSPB who have seen their local landscape transformed. Across Britain, and with little fanfare, the face of the countryside has subtly changed in recent years. Farm fields that stood idle for years under EU schemes to prevent overproduction, such as the one across the road from the RSPB, have been conscripted back into active service. The uncultivated land, previously a haven for wildlife, has been ploughed, and farmers have planted crops such as wheat and barley, with occasional hemp for use in paper and textiles.

As a result, the amount of land available for birds such as the woodlark has halved in the last two years. Without efforts to stem this loss of habitat, conservation experts warn that the countryside of the future could look and sound very different.

Starved of insects in the spring and seeds through the winter, the metallic-sounding corn bunting and plump grey partridge, formerly one of the most common birds on UK shores, are on the brink. And the skylark, whose twittering has provided the soundtrack to millions of countryside walks and inspired Percy Bysshe Shelley, in Ode to a Skylark, to praise its "profuse strains of unpremeditated art", is struggling and could soon vanish from many areas. Numbers fell 53% from 1970 to 2006. "This is not just about birdwatchers. These birds are part of our common heritage," says Gareth Morgan, head of agriculture policy at the RSPB.






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