This exquisite little character happens to be one of the UK’s rarest birds and tends to be confined to just one very small area of the South Devon coast. I was down there for about ten days in the summer of 2006 to do all sorts of ranger stuff, including a snap-shot survey of Emberiza cirlus here. I managed to count 41 of them while covering 110 miles of coastal footpaths, bridleways and woodland trails.