Open letter #1 An open letter to my local MP in support of a ban on Driven Grouse Shooting.

I am writing to express my support for the campaign to criminalise the driven shooting of Red Grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotius), and in support of the E-petition to ban it, started by Dr Mark Avery, which has received over 18,500 signatures at time of writing.  The campaign brings together grassroots conservation campaigners and seeks to address the tragic and unacceptable decline and potential extinction of the Hen Harrier (Circus cyaneus) as an English breeding bird.  It is my belief that a full ban on driven grouse shooting- where grouse are flushed from the heather by beaters onto the waiting guns-is the only way we can stop the criminal elements in this industry, who have proved themselves pathologically incapable of leaving magnificent birds of prey alone. The Hen Harrier, despite a range of efforts to save it, has now been reduced to a few breeding pairs in England and Wales.  After several decades, co-operation between Grouse shooting enterprises and government conservation agencies and NGOs has been a failure, and the English Hen Harrier population has continued its catastrophic downward trajectory.  If grouse shooting itself were criminalised, the profit in killing Hen Harriers would be wiped out overnight. It is already illegal to kill Hen Harriers, but gamekeepers and their landed masters continue to flout the law, as enforcement is minimal and the vast uplands hard to police, especially on wildlife crime budgets reduced by the Conservative party.  It is easy to discretely destroy a nest, or place bait or a trap, or shoot these trusting birds, as they are highly reluctant to abandon their nests and young.  It is far harder to conceal a party of guns and a band of hired beaters, and harder still to market a criminal shoot.  I am sure the League Against Cruel Sports or similar organisations would be able to support the law enforcement agencies, as they do in the case of Fox hunting, which has mercifully been criminalised, ensuring prosecutions where grouse are deliberately chased from cover onto the waiting guns.

The pro-shooting lobby claim that a ban on driven grouse shooting would damage rural economies, and grossly inflated figures tend to be trotted out by bodies such as the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Countryside Alliance, figure which typically represent the economic value of shooting as a whole, and not that of driven grouse shooting exclusively. It seems unlikely that driven shooting is of great benefit to the rural economy. It is seldom profitable and relies heavily on public subsidy, which surely undermines the Conservative values of enterprise and market freedom which are so often espoused by the clients, landowners and the current government of which you are a part.   Furthermore, shooting sees large swathes of access land closed to the public during the summer school holidays, at the height of the tourist season, and when the purple moorland is in full bloom and at its most beautiful. This cannot benefit areas like the Forest of Bowland and the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, where business relies so heavily on tourism. A restored Hen Harrier population, with watch points run by organisations such as the Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB, and by local entrepreneurs however, could make a substantial economic contribution, more than replacing any losses caused by the banning of driven grouse shooting, and would not represent a drain on public funds.

Grouse shooting has other damaging impacts on the uplands, as heather burns, designed to artificially create habitat and food sources for unnaturally high numbers of grouse, has an appreciable impact on hydrology and may increase the risk of flooding. Too high a frequency of burns can also damage the peaty upland soils and peat bogs, vital carbon sinks in the fight against climate change, and can damage floristic diversity in these scarce, and distinctly British habitats.

The Hen Harrier is an inspiring sight whether in summer in the uplands or in the lowlands during the winter, as it ghosts over the reed beds, and I hope one day to be able to witness it and not see the conversation with any other witnesses turn to persecution.  It would be a tragedy if it were lost so that frustrated city boys and foreign oligarchs with guns can blast barely flightworthy juvenile grouse out of the sky on the ‘Glorious’ Twelfth.  Only three Hen Harrier nests successfully fledged young in 2014, and in 2012 there were no successful nests.  Even the most optimistic estimates place the English breeding Hen Harrier population at around 12 pairs, while published estimates for the potential population, given the existing habitat, range between 40 and 200 pairs.  It is clear that action is needed now, and that the government should heed the public call for a ban on driven shooting during this parliament,  before the Hen Harrier is gone, and it is too late. 


The Epetition is available here:  http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/65627

The Last Flurries of Winter

ese past couple of days, still in Lancaster and without any pressing deadlines (how wonderful it feels to be free of pressing deadlines,) I was rather hopeful of getting some good wildlife spotting in. It’d been nearly a week since I last went birding, when incidentally I was able to add Bittern to my Lancashire list, one flying through the evening sunshine over the still brown reed beds at the RSPB’s stunning Leighton Moss.  I was enthusiastic to get out there and find some wildlife, see something I’d not seen before, perhaps.  On my way to drop off my essay, it did occur to me there may have been a fall of migrants, with what I am  I handed in my essay on Friday afternoon, and, no sooner had I done so, than the wind began to pick up, and Lancaster was, not for the first time that day, raked by horizontal, and some might say unseasonal snow.

Unseasonal. With Pheasant tracks.

I cursed climate change for its increasing tendencies toward extremes of weather, and spent the day indoors watching films instead. When I did manage to face up to the unseasonably big freeze, I got in the car and headed up, away from the sea this time, and into the Forest of Bowland, an area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which lies to the East of Lancaster. It took only a few minutes on delightfully names roads (Bay Horse Road! Procter Moss Lane!) to reach the car park in Abbeystead, a small town in Bowland. I wandered into the woods toward Abbeystead Lake. Bird life seemed a little scarce, the woods were quiet, and the footprints in the snow, enchanting to look at though they were almost exclusively those of grey squirrels and pheasants.  However the great tits with their two syllable song, were really going for it, the harbingers of early spring appeared unperturbed by the snow, which was thick on the ground in places. There were a few blue and coal tits about in the branches, but bird life seemed sparse.

Upland stream  in the Forest of Bowland

Upon reaching the lake, which was all pleasantly dramatic, lying in a steep-sided, wooded valley, with the snow white Bowland fells climbing up behind it, I startled up a few nervous mallards. Some teal, too, rested on the dark green water and a couple of Jackdaws passed overhead cawing. I continued round the lake, which was held by an impressive dam, and down into the woods. Robins and chaffinches occasionally flew across the path in front of me. As I walked back up toward the lake I became aware of a few Goosander, unfamiliar before my move up North but near ubiquitous round here it seems, floating about on the water surface, but I wondered where all the birds had gone. It occurred to me they may well have cleared out of these upland woods and headed somewhere at lower altitude, somewhere more sheltered, perhaps.  Walking across a bit of farmland on the way back to the car park revealed not just pheasants but also good numbers of Lapwing and Snipe in the fields, so the true upland waders at least were still on their spring habitat. Some of the lapwings were displaying, whooping and tumbling, using their broad wings to aerobatic advantage. Spring, it seemed, was in the air still somewhere, alongside the wind chill.  I drove home dodging pheasants and snowdrifts. One poor pheasant must have had the fright of his life, caught between a snowdrift, an oncoming vehicle and a Buzzard. Of course I waited until he had disappeared into the hedge beyond the snowdrift before I proceeded. 

Abbeystead Lake, Bowland, Lancs.

Today I headed down to a place near Scorton, on the river Wyre where it is still fast and narrow. I parked up at a picnic site with some bird feeders in it, which clearly hadn’t been filled for some time. A few blue and great tits hopped about in the trees above them, looking awkward and expectant. I walked past and onto the banks of the Wyre, where the tree canopy opened, The sky was blue, but a few flakes of snow fell from it inexplicably. A dipper shot up and down the river and paused on a rock for a moment, allowing me to take a (poor) photograph before returning to a cluster of branches by the waters edge. As it did so a second bird appeared and flew upstream. A pair of dippers, and a lovely new addition to my Lancashire list. These lovely birds are very scarce indeed down South, they are birds of the west and the midlands it seems, specialists of fast flowing streams, dipping under the water to hunt invertebrates and emerging still perfectly dry, smart and distinctive in their smart brown plumage and white breast.

Cinculus cinculus

   

Rounding the corner into the wood what struck me was the snowdrops. The wood was covered in them, and among them daffodils too were springing out of the ground. In stark contrast to the upland wood in Bowland, this wood down near the Wyre was a different matter. The snow had all cleared, as if it had never been there (of course, it might never have been there) and the snowdrops and daffodils still stood proud. March snowfall has been part of these plants evolution, of course. When the channel first separated Britain from the continent, about 12 thousand years ago,  isolating its impoverished fauna, anything which could not tolerate March snow would not have been able to survive. Colder winters abound through our history, the mini ice age of the 18^th century, the cold snap of the 1970s, and spring flowers have made it through. Here they formed a glorious white carpet splashed with yellow. Somewhere among the singing great tits I thought I heard a chiffchaff.  Cormorants flew overhead through a blue sky, and a buzzard was patrolling somewhere. Spring wasn’t cancelled, it had just had a minor setback, and it will be interesting to see what effect this late flurry of winter has had on wildlife phenology as the year progresses. 

Snowdrops near Scorton, Lancs.

RSPB Leighton Moss 17th February 2013

On a day that was truly beginning to feel like spring I took myself up to my favourite wetland in the whole of North Lancashire, the RSPB’s Leighton Moss, which sits in a valley close to Morecambe Bay, in the shadow of Warton Crag, in the Silverdale AONB.  I took with me the excuse of going to look for literature, I am set to do my dissertation project up on Warton Crag, looking at butterflies in the summer.  Before I reached the car park I wondered if there was a big twitch on, such were the numbers of people lugging their scopes up the road. It turned out the only particular rarity in the sky above Leighton Moss was the sun. It had brought the people out on a sunny Sunday afternoon for sure. Although I had arrived alone this would not be a day of birding with solitude, and the reserve hosted quite a volume of people!  The sound of distant shooting also broke my tranquillity a little bit, although my inner hippy was calmed a little when a volunteer reassured me today’s shoot was for Clay Pigeons.

I paused initially at the Moss Passerine Experience, or feeding station as its more popularly known, and watched the handsome Chaffinches, looking very bright and sharply coloured in the sunshine. There was a Brambling about, a close relative of the chaffinch and relatively scarce winter visitor.  Numbers vary from winter to winter, but they are about every year, apparently displaying very little site fidelity, and they are irruptive.  When in small numbers they tend to follow flocks of chaffinches, and this, a smart female with resplendent orange shoulder flashes, was doing just that. She would appear on one of the bird feeders for a couple of seconds before being off in a blur of black, orange and white. Bramblings always have distinctive bright white rumps, which are usually a dull green in Chaffinches.

Also around the feeders were the obligatory pair of bullfinches, the male with his bright, unmistakeable pink breast, perched openly, even allowing for a couple of blurry photographs in one of the trees. The female is just as pretty but a little more subdued in markings. Bullfinches are shy birds and feeding stations like this present an unusual opportunity to get close to them. A feeder with several ports at which the birds could land on it was squabbled over by chaffinches, but the Brambling appeared able to chase them off, and among the assembled spectators getting photos of unusual combinations of passerines on this feeder  became a pastime.  Goldfinch, Robin and Dunnock were also to be seen on the feeders.

I wandered down to the public hide, in the hope of catching up with an Otter or a Bittern, both of which have been seen there, the former apparently this morning according to a lady with a posh scope.  I saw neither, but there were a couple of smart Greater Black Backed Gulls munching on a tasty looking chunk of Perch they’d managed to get their claws into. A few cormorants shared a shingle island with them, and the telescope (hooray I got my new toy back!) picked out some roosting Lapwing behind them. I moved on to the lower hide, from which one of the Marsh Harriers, an old female, could be seen quartering over the reeds. The coots were chasing each other about, and I scanned the distant flocks of Tufted Duck for Scaup, fruitlessly, although there was a female Pochard in amongst them. A pair of Great Crested Grebes bobbed and nodded elegantly at each other. I’ve only seen the famously romantic weed pass in which Grebes indulge once, and was hoping that this amorous duo might perform for the camera, but watching their elegant bobbing and mirroring display was beauty enough. On my return stroll through the reindeer-lichen and Jew’s ear bedecked trees,  I once again made the acquaintance of the friendly, and particularly gorgeous, cock Pheasant who hangs out up there.  He posed for a couple of photos before weight of human traffic on the little causeway, and an alarming pheasant out on the shooting estate next door, sent him scurrying for the shelter of the enormous reed beds.

Freindly Pheasant

Spring was again in the air as robins could be seen doing the tail cocking and chasing but not with real intent thing, indicating breeding birds sussing each other out for mate potential despite their still strong and fiercely territorial instincts.

Once back at the visitors centre I grabbed a cup of coffee, and chatted to one of the staff about the butterflies of Warton Crag. Bring on the summer, there are Scotch Argus and High Brown Fritillary in addition to the lovely little Northern Brown Argus, which I hope to help a little through the application of science this summer, to be seen! Butterflies over coffee aside, I made my way to the Tim Jackson hide, which lies at the Western end of the main reserve. I noticed a Marsh Tit on a branch as I walked through the woods. To my surprise another perched a few feet from it. The first bird darted down and into a small gap in a moss covered log, and appeared to retrieve something. It’s partner then did the same, until a chaffinch chased it away. The chaffinch was chased off by a Dunnock, which retreated when a Nuthatch arrived. The penny soon dropped that someone had placed some sunflower seeds inside the log, and it was on these that these disparate passerines were feeding. The Marsh tits returned breifly until the prettiest blue tits ever chased them off, feisty little birds that they are.  I watched for a few minutes and, even in the dim light of the woods, managed to rattle off a few photos of the passerines as they came and went, usually pursuing each other as they did so. 

Marsh Tit

The Tim Jackson hide revealed a Little Egret and another quartering Marsh Harrier, and the usual selection of ducks.  The low sun through the window made birding tricky and I decided to use the last hour of fading light to check out the pools on the salt marsh from the Eric Morecambe hide. The car park bears dire warnings of car thieves, but I parked up and wandered on anyway. The sun was setting over the flat expanse of salt marsh down to the edge of Morecambe Bay. Another Egret could be seen standing about beside the reeds, and there were numerous handsome pintail about on the water. A Marsh Harrier scattered them, but as the birds settled back in, there was a pair of Avocets among them. These beautiful black and white waders apparently breed here, beside the expansive bay. As the sun dropped below the horizon, lighting up a red sky streaked with cirrus clouds and air trails, I was struggling to separate waders in the settling gloom, but the little cluster still active consisted of two Redshank, two Spotted Redshank and a Greenshank.

I walked back slowly toward the car, with my scope slung over my shoulder. I became aware of a shape, stock still against the horizon, on top of the ridge. It was a deer. I hadn’t seen one here since my and Natalie’s encounter with one at the Moss some time ago. The animal was picked out against the red sky, and it stood stock still, presumably hoping in stillness lay invisibility. It lifted its head and shook its ears. 

 

Full Species List for 17/02/2013

Mute Swan Cygnus Olor, Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus, Canada Goose Branta Canadensis, Greylag Goose Anser anser, Mallard Anas Platyrynchos, Teal Anas creccia, Wigeon Anas penelope, Shoveller Anas clypeata, Pintail Anas acuta, Gadwall Anas strepera, Tufted Duck Aythya fuligula, Pochard Aythya ferina, Goldeneye Bucephala clangula, Shelduck Tadorna tadorna, Coot Fulica atra, Moorhen Gallinula chloropus Pheasant Phasianus colchicus, Snipe Gallinago gallinago, Avocet Recurvirostra avocetta, Greenshank Tringa nebularia, Redshank Tringa totanus, Spotted Redshank Tringa erythropus, Black Tailed Godwit Limosa limosa, Curlew Numenius arquata, Lapwing Vanellus vanellus, Little Egret Egretta garzetta, Cormorant Phalacrocorax carbo, Great Black Backed Gull Larus marinus, Black Headed Gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus, Marsh Harrier (Circus aeruginosus) Woodpigeon Columba palumbens, Carrion Crow Corvus corone, Jackdaw corvus monedula, Magpie pica pica Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) Blackbird (Turdus philomelos) Redwing (Turdus illiacus) Robin (Erithacus rubecula) Dunnock (Prunella modularis) Nuthatch Sitta Europea, Blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) Coal tit (Paraparus ater) Marsh Tit (Poecile palustris) Great tit (Parus major) Brambling  Fringilla montefringilla, Chaffinch Fringilla coelebs, Bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula, Goldfinch Carduelis carduelis, Greenfinch Carduelis chloris,