Climate change is taking its toll on bird populations
There are few places more joyous to my mind than Upper Wensleydale in the summer. The wildflower meadows and vast Yorkshire Dales sky. The swallows racing and the call of the curlew an ever-present swoon.
Today at Castle Bolton in Wensleydale, on what is forecast to be a bright day (as indeed will be the case for most of us) a group of nature lovers are gathering for a festival celebrating the curlew – that magnificent bird of the uplands of Britain.
Although celebrate is perhaps the wrong word. With the curlew now one of the most rapidly declining breeding birds in Britain, it is more of a lament.
The causes for such a marked decline (46 per cent across Britain between 1994 and 2010 alone) are varied and complex. Predation is playing its part, while habitat loss and climate change are believed by many to be the far greater threats.
For another indication of the impact climate change is having on some bird populations cast your mind towards the towering cliffs of Sumburgh Head on mainland Shetland.
In 2000, there were more than 33,000 puffins on the island in early spring. That figure dropped to 570 last year. Similarly, Shetland’s kittiwake population plummeted from over 55,000 in 1981 to 5,000 in 2011, while the arctic tern is suffering similarly catastrophic declines.
Warming temperatures in the North Sea and North Atlantic are believed by scientists to have had a major impact on sand eel populations, upon which seabirds rely heavily for food.
Seabirds are having to fly ever further in the pursuit of a decent meal. One Shetland puffin was found to have flown nearly 250 miles for some grub.
It is also thought the invertebrates upon which curlew feed are also disappearing as temperatures warm.
Such birds are part of how we define our landscapes. The thought of a day in the moors without hearing its call is really too much to bear.