A CONSERVATIONIST, battling to protect a Halesowen beauty spot from the threat of development, has conducted a new survey of the area for birds and butterflies.

John Ebrey, a surveyor for the British Ornithological Trust for 25 years, has spotted seven RSPB red rated breeds of birds – the highest level of conservation concern.

They are the linnet, house sparrow, song thrush, mistle thrush and starling and all are breeding on Coombeswood Green Wedge.

Mr Ebrey, who is campaigning for Local Nature Reserve status to safeguard the wedge from possible house building, has also listed several red rated birds using it as a migratory corridor and passage to other areas.

These include herring gulls, redwings, fieldfares, wood warblers and lesser spotted woodpeckers.

His survey, conducted between April and June, also includes several amber rated birds, both breeding and travelling through the wedge, as well as numerous species which are not at risk.

He said: “For the benefit of our increasingly diminishing population of most of our wild bird species, it has now been shown that Coombeswood Wedge represents a crucial location on a migratory/passage corridor of very considerable national and local importance.”

Mr Ebrey has noted around 16 varieties of butterfly during the same period, including at least 300 meadow browns in abandoned fields adjoining Fir Tree Farm on June 30 – the most he had ever seen in one location on the wedge.

He added: “Yellow meadow ant and common field grasshopper have moved in very significant numbers during the preceding two years or so to the abandoned fields from other parts of the wedge, where they are no longer so numerous.”

Landowners St Modwen have previously expressed an interest in building houses on the fields.

Mr Ebrey said the British Trust for Ornithology and the RSPB will be considering the implications of his study and his butterfly survey has been passed to the Biological Records Centre for Birmingham and the Black Country.