No distancing for wildlife as nature reclaims the moors
IT FELT like a journey back in time, perhaps into the misty folds of more than half a century ago.
I was taking a walk across a Yorkshire Dales moor.
I was using a route that was so socially distanced I didn’t meet another soul for more than two hours.
As for other living things, not for decades have I encountered such vibrant birdlife along one public right of way in the Dales.
This has to be a direct result of there having been no human disturbance in the early spring when the nation went into lockdown.
This allowed some bird species to reclaim the haunts they abandoned as far back as the 1950s, when car ownership began to increase and the new national park came within an easy drive from the towns and cities of the West Riding.
The path I took runs more or less north-west to south-east over a plateau of heather and rough sheep pasture high above the main Grassington to Pateley Bridge road.
And from the moment I joined it a golden plover – a male resplendent in its breeding plumage of rich golden spots – leapt out of juncus rushes close to the path and flew onto a dry stone wall, from which it delivered its plaintive and almost melancholy call.
Fearful of prolonging my intrusion on its breeding site I hastened southwards along the top of the moor only to find that a few minutes later I had disturbed a common sandpiper.
It rose from not so much a beck as a runnel just a few paces off the path, and flew in a fairly wide circle around me before alighting on a boulder, where it stood vibrating its entire body while scolding me with its shrill piping.
In parts of Scotland the common sandpiper’s vernacular name of “killileepie” captures the sound perfectly.
By now it was clear the effect that lockdown had had on this part of the Dales.
The path isn’t one of the most tramped in the area but would surely have seen more than a few walkers each day during a normal spring.
And it would certainly have seen enough walkers to persuade these birds to build their nests on less frequented parts of the moor.
Further on it was evident that curlews, too, had nested close to the right of way.
They had produced young birds which both parents defended by upping the decibels of their cries as I came perilously close to stepping on one.
The same thing happened ten minutes later with a pair of lapwings.
Other signs of my walk being a throwback to quieter times came when a beautiful male ring ouzel briefly appeared on a wall.
I haven’t seen the species in the area since the 1980s.
Then, a pair of stonechats noisily trailed me downhill until I was no longer considered a danger.
It was almost with a sense of relief that I reached the car.
My route may have avoided other humans by not so much two metres as two miles, but socially distancing myself from the moor’s birdlife had turned out to be a total failure.