Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Upland bird living on a wing and a prayer
It is a thrush of wild places with an unusual name and an uncertain future. Pairs of ring ouzels on Dartmoor have fallen to perilously low numbers and this migrant species now faces extinction in the West Country, its final outpost in southern England, wr
Ihave experienced the sense of loss in a landscape, the stillness, the emptiness, the silence. There is an ache in the air, the feeling of a place incomplete, waiting for something that may never arrive.
It was high on Dartmoor in a rocky valley earlier this month, along a path I have walked many times over the years while searching for one of the national park’s rarest birds.
Hope for this species hangs by the thinnest of threads and it could soon become extinct as a breeding species on the moor, and as such in southern England.
The species is a mountain blackbird called the ring ouzel, similar looking to the garden blackbird but with a crescent of white across the chest, and it visits our uplands in the spring and summer to breed.
When I first helped volunteer with a survey of its Dartmoor breeding population back in 2011 there were up to a dozen pairs scattered across suitable habitat in the park.
That number has more than halved down the decade, and every year its return becomes less and less certain.
During spring last year, when Dartmoor was free of visitors and potential disturbance for many weeks on end due to pandemic lockdown restrictions, there was a possibility this might help improve the fortunes of this shy and enigmatic upland dweller. Only it was not to be. Just two pairs were confirmed as nesting during 2020 in the whole of the 368 square miles of the national park.
And so, when I returned at dawn to one of their favoured haunts at the beginning of this month I did so filled with doubt – the realistic concern that they might simply not put in an appearance.
Halfway up the rocky valley I stopped and sat for a while. A clear stream ran between boulders behind me, and in front a granite cliff rose to an exposed crag high above. I could point out the various spots on the heather-covered flanks of this precipitous rock face where ring ouzels have nested in previous years: just under the horizontal slab to the right, under a thicket of bilberry fairly low down nearby, high up in a fissure close to the lone tree… Except that on this occasion there were none to be seen.
This is a place that typically resounds with their agitated ‘chack-chack’ calls and the simple, piping song of the male, staking his claim to a patch of territory, securing a mate and repelling rivals. It is a repetitive song, melancholic and well suited to this harsh and unforgiving environment, cutting through the wind and the rush of the stream. Yet it was quiet. A void the calls of meadow pipits and wheatears could not fill.
Perhaps I was being overly pessimistic. While the Dartmoor population chart for this member of the thrush family gives little grounds for optimism – a line seemingly sliding inexorably toward zero – it was still early in the season, and more could soon arrive from their wintering grounds in north-west Africa and southern Spain.
A few years back this valley held three to four pairs, and if this stretch of prime habitat was currently unoccupied then it might be filled in a week or so, I consoled myself. Maybe I had missed some on the way up that I might chance across on my return. They can be wily birds when they want to keep out of view and patience and perseverance is generally required when searching for ring ouzels.
And so, to my relief, it proved to be.
Further down the valley, on the boulder-strewn side of a tor that provides a regular site for nesting – an area I had already checked carefully – I spotted a blackbird-sized bird landing silently in the heather and a second following soon after. A sight to lift the spirits: two ring ouzels.
One was a male – sooty black with a distinctive white bib. The other close by, only sighted briefly, had a browner tone to the plumage which suggested a female. They flew over the stream to grassland and out of view.
One can but hope they were a pair, here to stay and not simply moving through, and that others will join them on Dartmoor to breed.
My worst fears that they had completely vanished were not realised. But the sense of absence earlier, along the higher sections of the valley, made me appreciate what it might feel like to lose them. Dartmoor would be diminished without their presence, would lose the element of wildness these upland birds bring. And the prospects, unfortunately, look bleak.
The national park has already lost golden plover as a nesting species, and it would appear that without concerted conservation effort curlew and lapwing are also likely to follow suit. The ring ouzel – the word ‘ouzel’ being an old term for blackbird, while the ‘ring’ refers to the bold band of white on the chest – has long gone as a regular breeding species from Bodmin Moor, and from Exmoor since the start of the new millennium. If they desert Dartmoor then one would have to travel to moors and mountains in Wales and northern
England to hear their piping songs in spring and summer.
I first became involved as a volunteer in helping survey Dartmoor ring ouzels when a detailed study was being run by naturalist and TV presenter Nick Baker and ecologist Fiona Freshney – both experts with superb field skills who were mapping nest sites and assessing the productivity of breeding pairs of this elusive bird of tough terrain. Others engaged in the research project included the RSPB’s Helen Booker, rangers, ringers and keen birdwatchers.
I mainly focussed my visits on a location close to where I live – and at times there were so many adults and young in the valley it was a challenge trying to keep track of what was going on.
Ringing of nestlings hinted that individuals had a tendency to be faithful to the place of their birth, returning to key moorland sites to breed – with one Dartmoor female reaching the grand age of eight and regularly raising young.
However, it is far from clear exactly why they are declining year on year. With migrating birds the problems of survival may be linked to their breeding areas, migration routes and wintering sites – spread over vast distances.
The more offspring they can raise the better – especially as it is believed only a third of young ring ouzels survive their first year to breed the following spring – and there are a number of theories as to why Dartmoor might no longer be as favourable as it once was, ranging from predation and disturbance to grazing levels and climate change.
The ‘holy grail’ for conservation is interventions that work, based on detailed knowledge of a species’ requirements. Cirl buntings have been helped back from the brink in the West Country with wildlife-friendly farming measures, while pied flycatchers now regularly breed in the West thanks to nestbox schemes.
But the complicated combination of factors behind the decline of ring ouzels on Dartmoor makes turning around their fortunes anything but straightforward. And while some work to improve or preserve habitat has been undertaken, more drastic measures to tackle issues such as human disturbance are unlikely to be implemented in an open access national park – especially given they occupy some of the moor’s most scenic locations.
Their decline here is also nothing new. It has been ongoing since at least the 1970s, when they were more plentiful on the moor. And this matches the national picture, with the species added to the UK Red List of birds of highest conservation concern in 2002.
With worryingly few now breeding on Dartmoor, minor setbacks can make a major difference – even dry weather making worms hard to come by, a wildfire damaging vegetation, or simply a fox or stoat raiding a nest or two. The fate of our ouzels is precarious.
Reporting on ongoing losses and the depressingly low number of pairs in 2020, Fiona Freshney wrote in her report that “the
Dartmoor ring ouzel population is on something of a precipice”.
Funded research has come to an end, but the ouzels on Dartmoor are still monitored annually on a voluntary basis.
It is important to keep tabs on numbers, so if you do spot one of these birds during this spring and summer on Dartmoor – or elsewhere in the South West for that matter – ensure they are not disturbed and do let me know and I will pass the details on. Email me at charles.elder@reachplc.com
The breeding season has just begun, and while my sightings got off to a shaky start, I will be returning again soon, crossing my fingers that there is still a glimmer of hope for Dartmoor’s precious ring ouzels. This special species is now living on a wing and a prayer.