Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Joys of spring for the Victorian twitcher
If you think this is a time of plenty, just imagine what it must have been like for late-19th century birdwatchers who enjoyed a diversity of species now largely lost from the West Country, writes Charlie Elder
Iwas woken at dawn by the repetitive sound of corncrakes calling in the field beside my west Dartmoor home. Opening the curtains I caught a glimpse of the secretive bird in a nettle patch, and a little further off I could see the regular spring gathering of male black grouse displaying in rough pasture.
As the sun rose higher, the valley’s turtle doves began filling the air with their purring song, and heading down the garden to feed the willow tits I spotted a covey of grey partridge crossing the lane and wondered whether it would be yet another good year for them. If only.
Sadly none of the above is the case anymore where I live as these birds have been lost as breeding species.
This is a time of year when we celebrate the multitude of wildlife around us – our bird numbers boosted by incoming migrants such as swallows and willow warblers.
However, given the population declines of many of our birds, we will sadly see fewer of some species this year than we did last year and the year before that.
In Devon the willow tit has been pretty much lost as a regular breeding species, with the turtle dove and grey partridge also on the way out.
And looking back over the longer term, the avian sights and sounds we enjoy this spring are very different from those experienced by people living more than a century ago. Corncrakes have long gone from the South West and black grouse too.
Annual surveys charting the population and range of breeding birds down the decades means that we have a detailed record of how our species are faring.
Thanks to a fascinating book by Simon Holloway exploring historical records, we can compare maps of today’s birdlife with those in Britain more than a century ago.
I have written before about the book, The Historical Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland, 1875-1900, but it is worth revisiting as the spring season gets into full swing. Especially as I have become increasingly conscious that this time of plenty can be something of an illusion, given the worrying loss of some birds where I live – the golden plover gone as a
Dartmoor breeding species, the ring ouzel on the brink, the curlew and lapwing likely to follow suit on the moor without concerted conservation action and more widely across the county the range of the charismatic cuckoo contracting.
Holloway’s book reveals just how widespread some birds currently of conservation concern once were, and illustrates the gains made by more recent colonisers and opportunists.
The patterns of change in Devon and Cornwall highlight the mixed fortunes of a number of species as agriculture modernised, woodland management altered, urban areas expanded and industry and transport networks left their mark.
Perhaps the most notable example is that of the corncrake – a grey-brown bird which is related to moorhens and coots, but lives on dry land. Formerly known as the land rail it was common enough to feature among the recipes of famed Victorian cookery writer Mrs Beeton (her butter and breadcrumb dish including 3-4 of the birds).
This summer migrant, a shy species of hay meadows, grassland and nettlebeds, was once familiar across West Country farmland. Although not easy to see, its loud, rasping and repetitive call would have been heard across the region in the late 1800s. The map in Holloway’s book shows it was particularly abundant in Somerset and Dorset.
Changing approaches to farming, particularly mechanical harvesters that destroyed broods, contributed to a relentless decline, and by the 1960s their call had
fallen silent, but for the occasional nesting pair. Today you have to travel to the Western Isles of Scotland or reserves in East Anglia to stand a chance of seeing, and hearing, one.
According to the Devon Birdwatching and Preservation Society book The Birds of Devon, by Mike Tyler, the last confirmed record of this red-listed species breeding in the county was in 1987 at Shillingford near Tiverton.
In the Victorian era black grouse were common in Devon and Somerset. These handsome game birds of open woodland and moorland edges, famed for their striking courtship displays, have now gone from the West. Dartmoor was a stronghold, but they petered out during the 20th century.
The turtle dove – a summer migrant with an orangey-chestnut back and purring song – was also a common breeding bird in the South West during the late 1800s, and across much of central and southern England and Wales. Today its population has thinned out dramatically across western counties, and it is largely confined to the south east – its range contraction similar to that of one of our greatest songsters, the nightingale.
The turtle dove is not to be confused with the plainer collared dove. That was not a bird the Victorians would have come across, as it only began colonising Britain in the 1950s. It is now an everyday sight in rural and suburban areas. A case of one out, one in when it comes to West Country doves.
Other birds far less numerous in the West today than in the last quarter of the 19th century, according to Holloway’s meticulous maps, include the cuckoo, curlew, quail, ring ouzel, corn bunting and cirl bunting – the latter being something of a recent South West conservation success story in terms of saving it from the brink of extinction in the UK.
The Victorian birdwatcher in Devon and Cornwall would have enjoyed coming across red-backed shrikes on a regular basis, as they were common in Devon and Cornwall, and abundant in many English counties. These striking-looking birds no longer nest in Britain, and on the rare occasion a precious pair turns up in spring, a 24-hour watch is put in place to guard against egg thieves.
It has not all been a story of decline though. Holloway’s book illustrates the march of the fulmar, a seabird of Iceland and the Faeroes which colonised and spread around the coast of Britain throughout the 20th century. The great black-backed gull, now a common sight around our coast, was also rare in the West Country in the 1800s, largely being a target of persecution.
Another newcomer is the little owl, which was released in the mid-1800s in central England and has since ranged far and wide, including westwards into parts of Devon, Dorset and Somerset, while the little egret – an extremely rare sighting in the 19th century – is now well established.
The pied flycatcher can now be found in mature woodlands in Devon and Somerset, where it readily nests in bird boxes, but was not on the tick list for Victorian ornithologists in the West Country. And the siskin is also a bird that has moved into the South West. Back in the 19th century this streaky yellow seed-eating finch was largely confined to Scotland, but its range rapidly expanded with the growth in conifer plantations and it is now a common West Country bird, and a colourful visitor to garden bird feeders.
We enjoy some gains, but they are outnumbered overall by losses of regular breeding species in Devon and Cornwall over the last 120-150 years, and certainly the total number of individual birds has fallen sharply over that period. Nationally, according to the State of the UK’s Birds 2020 report, we have lost some 19 million pairs of native breeding birds since the late 1960s.
The avian sights and sounds of a West Country spring are certainly very different when compared with the end of the 19th century.
And, however much I might wish it were so, when it comes to today’s dawn chorus I’ll never enjoy calling corncrakes with my cornflakes.