Dead Friar’s Stone, above Weardale, County Durham.
When I was last on these moors it was the end of June, and a family of curlews was running around on the path. At least, I like to think it was a family, with one chick successfully fledged. Certainly, there were three of them, one with a shorter beak than the others, and I heard what sounded like parental alarm calls as I came close. One by one they lifted off from the heather, sailing out over the valley, the ground falling away below them. Not for the first time, I wished that I could fly.
The curlew is my spirit bird, and my heart lifts when I see and hear one. But they are in decline, with the UK population falling by 55% since the 1990s. Curlews are long-lived birds, so the decline seems to arise not from poor adult survival but rather from a lack of nesting success – eggs that are destroyed before hatching, and hatched chicks killed before fledging.
Today, though, the curlews are gone to their winter quarters on the estuaries, and the only sounds come from the sheep, ewes calling anxiously to their lambs. Until there is a sudden whirring of wings, the grouse erupting from almost under my feet with its peremptory “Go-back! Go-back!” call.
Grouse are king here, although as they exist only to be shot, it’s a dubious honor.
The heather is in bloom, a mass of pinks and purples that gild distant hills with an amethyst haze. Closer up, it’s clear that the heather blooms in patches. Square blocks, maybe 10 meters on a side, are interspersed with areas of blackened stems and charred peat. This chequerboard pattern is the signature of heavily-managed grouse moor. Blocks are burned each spring to stimulate the tender new growth that grouse prefer to eat, and to create the variability in plant height which provides them with shelter. When I walked here in June, it seemed that I could still smell smoke as my feet crunched through the charcoal stems.
To my younger self, growing up in the Highlands of Scotland and the North Pennines, these landscapes of heather and grouse signified home. It seemed they must always have been there, but I’ve come to learn that they are relatively recent in the history of this land. They are now contested ground. A younger generation calls for an end to driven grouse-shooting and the transformation – “rewilding” - of the British uplands.
I can’t help but wonder what this would mean for my spirit bird.
Moorland managers like to point to the abundance of curlews – and other waders (golden plovers, redshanks, snipe and lapwings) – on grouse moors. It’s no secret that, to be economically viable, grouse moors need to produce incredibly high numbers of grouse. Along with heather burning, and medicated grit, that level of grouse production requires very high levels of predator control. Predators legally “controlled” (i.e., killed) on grouse moors include foxes, crows, and weasels. All that habitat management and predator control seems to be good for curlews: some studies suggest that breeding success is three times higher on managed grouse moors.
So, from the perspective of curlews, highly-managed grouse moors are a good thing.
From the perspective of Hen Harriers, or Red Kites, or any other raptor, they are not.
You might think that, given the abundance of grouse prey, raptor populations would flourish in association with grouse moors. However, their populations are anomalously low compared to what the habitat and prey abundance could support. The birds are simply…missing. In recent years the introduction of satellite tagging has shown that there is a clear pattern of healthy raptors “disappearing” over managed grouse moors.
From where I stand, I can look down over Stanhope Dene, where an endangered Red Kite was found in June of this year, hanging from a tree. It had been both poisoned and shot. Turning around, I can see on the far skyline where another poisoned Red Kite was found last summer. Harassment of raptors – whether through shooting, poisoning, or nest disturbance – is illegal, but common. Enforcement is lacking and penalties are seemingly inadequate.
Would some of those missing raptors prey on curlew chicks? Almost certainly. But that wouldn’t lead me to advocate for killing raptors, even if it were legal. For our uplands to be healthy we need both waders and raptors, and I’m not willing to trade off one for another. And I’m not sure that grouse moors, in their current form, are economically viable without that trade-off.
Even as I enjoy the sight and smell of the heather, I feel the emptiness of the skies, the birds that should be there and are not. It’s a beautiful scene, but deeply flawed, and the juxtaposition of beauty and death breaks my heart.