Lancashire wildlife

Thirty years ago I started working for the RSPB on a six month upland bird surveying contract – with the additional challenge of helping to protect England’s only regular nesting hen harriers. The Forest of Bowland was the only stronghold for hen harriers in England in 1982 – it still is. I’ll be contributing a series of guest blogs over the spring and summer and tweeting in real time on @andrefarrar

Winter’s last grasping fingers of snow gathered on tracks and stream sides as spring finally won through with two swifts cutting the cold air.

May dawned cold but quickly recovered its composure as my endless walking and sitting and scanning revealed a third merlin territory.  The nest would be tucked away in heather, likely as not on a break in the gradient of the hill giving the nest a good view.

The behaviour of the peregrines was changing – lots of activity and calling, but still the eggs were visible, was hatching imminent? 

Marching about between the harriers and peregrine territories didn’t leave much time to just sit and watch, but I would always find a few moments to enjoy two birds that my mind always associates together from my time in Bowland; grey wagtail and common sandpiper. Walking to check the peregrines alongside a rocky stream was a festival of bobbing and wagging as dippers dipped alongside the other two.

Dipper - photo Tom Marshall, RSPB Images

Now all of the spring migrants had joined the residents my walks and transects became more predictable – until one morning I bumped into a goshawk. It was a casual encounter as there wouldn’t be the time to nail down where they were nesting.

Follow me on twitter.

What a busy couple of weeks I’ve had! Bouncing here there and everywhere, colouring-in and cutting out, painting, gluing, sticking and crafting... and that was just the prep work! Part of the fun of working with primary schools has to be that you get to be a kid again yourself. I sometimes have to remind myself that yes, playing with puppets, story-telling, make-believing, dressing-up and all those messy, sticky arts and crafts do actually count as “work”! Honestly, it’s a tough life.

Of course, despite the appearance of frivolity, at the core of all the fun and games we are still delivering some key educational messages: hen harriers are beautiful, amazing birds; the moorland landscape is a unique and special place; hen harriers are an integral part of that landscape and while moorland has many uses, we all have a responsibility to look after it for people and for wildlife.

Just last week, I visited a school in North Tynedale which we had previously engaged with in 2008, the last time that hen harriers nested successfully in the local area. The school still had their “adoption” certificate hanging on the wall from when the children named all the chicks and followed their progress from hatching to fledging. Four years later, one boy, who had been in the Reception class at the time and had now reached the grand old age of eight and one quarter, was enthusiastically telling me almost everything there is to know about hen harriers, without so much as a prompt! The information had obviously stuck.

Now this boy clearly had a particular interest in birds and wildlife, and it’s fair to say that every child we work with won’t grow up to be the next David Attenborough. But whether they grow up to be teachers, gamekeepers, business owners, conservationists or even IT consultants, as long as they carry with them the knowledge that hen harriers are a beautiful and integral part of our upland heritage, deserving and in need of our protection, then perhaps we’ll have a future for these birds after all.