I hope no-one is reading this confined to a small flat in London. It’s been a beautiful week in Yorkshire, notwithstanding the unfolding crisis. I’ve had the chance to visit some of the parts of the valley which I see less often.
Having just read the sobering accounts of Mark Cocker’s Our Place and Benedict Macdonald’s Rebirding I have new-found interest in some of the farmland birds which, thankfully, we still have up here. Although I guess we’ve all seen the stats, it’s only sinking in recently for me that birds like Lapwings are actually completely absent from large swathes of the country south from here. They’re also now absent from the lower parts of our valley.
The cattle- and sheep-grazed fringes of Rombald’s Moor at its eastern end are a relative oasis. It’s scruffy and marginal agricultural land but in brilliant spring sunshine this week the fields of Reva Hill are alive with drumming Snipe, Curlew, Lapwing, Skylark, Golden Plover and Grey Partridge: all of them priority conservation species.
It would be great to do something to do something to preserve this habitat but maybe it’s not under immediate threat. Possibly the greatest danger is of inappropriate wholesale tree-planting in this particular area. It could take a bit more vegetation: some Rowan, Holly and Gorse would be fine.
