The Changing Bird Life of Whittle-le-Woods – A Response to Stephen Moss

 I am a strictly casual birdwatcher. I own an ornithologist’s telescope and occasionally spend time in hides, but not for long and not with much success – I have to rely on others to identify most sightings. I am certainly not a ‘twitcher’, and was not even tempted by the recent appearanceof a rare belted kingfisher at Brockholes nature reserve. But I like spotting birds, and for years have taken my binoculars with me on my many walks around Whittle-le-Woods and have maintained a bird feeding station outside my living room window. I have seen and appreciated a wide range of birds, and have noticed the changes in bird populations that have occurred over the thirty-five years that I have lived in Whittle. In this article, I will set out the results of my years of casual ornithology.

 

My musings were inspired by a recent article by the writer Stephen Moss, who remarked that he had seen 100 bird species within a mile ofhis home. Now Stephen Moss is a professional naturalist and serious birder, who lives on the Somerset Levels, a well-known bird haven. How many species have I seen within a mile of my house, I wondered, in a very different, and more suburban part of the country? So I took a pair of compasses to a map of Whittle, measured a mile-radius circle, and leafed through my trusty Shell Guide to the Birds of Britain and Ireland to count the number of species I had seen. I will reveal the total at the end of the article!

 

At the outset, however, I must be clear about what this article is not:

·         It is not the definitive total of bird species in Whittle. It is the total of what I have seen in my garden and on my walks. Doubtless other birders, more skilful, committed or lucky than me, have seen more species. Likely, I will see more in the future. My list at best provides a benchmark for others to compare with.

·         It is not a list of the birds that can be seen in Whittle today. Much has changed over the past thirty-five years, and not for the better. Some species that were once common in Whittle are now scarce. A recent RSPB report states that 70 of Britain’s 245 bird species are now at serious risk, and while some species are increasing in numbers, 66% of the gains are in just eight species (blackcap, chiffchaff, blackbird, wren, goldfinch, robin, woodpigeon and blue tit). I will note during the article my impressions of how my bird sightings have changed over the years.

 

Grey herons are becoming quite common near Whittle's waterways

My Mile-Radius Circle

I live within walking distance of the Roebuck Inn on Waterhouse Green, so I will take the Roebuck as the centre of my circle. To the north, the mile extends up the A6 to the junction with Swansea Lane. To the east, it crosses fields and the Leeds-Liverpool canal and up the hillside to Copthurst Lane. Southwards, it follows the A6 again to the Sea View Inn. Westwards, it crosses the grounds of Shaw Hill and Lisieux Hall and reaches Central Avenue in Buckshaw Village. The area within the circle embraces a range of landscapes. Much is taken up with the expanding housing estates that spread out from the A6, but there is plenty of countryside, and also water. To the east is rising ground, dominated by pastoral farms and wooded lanes. To the west, Buckshaw Village has grown up on the former Royal Ordnance Factory site, and there is Shaw Hill golf course, and patches of arable farming around Lisieux Hall. Then to the north-west we enter the southern end of Cuerden Valley Park, with managed wildlife areas among its farmscapes. The River Lostock runs through the middle of the circle and the Leeds-Liverpool and Lancaster canals, and the restored lodge of Lower Kem Mill, provide havens for water birds (another small area of water, the former lodge of Lowe Mill Print Works, is not these days accessible to the general public, and as an angling centre, water birds are not encouraged there). Patches of woodland are dotted around, and there are many gardens with well-stocked bird tables. So there is diversity of landscape to – hopefully – encourage a wide range of bird species. We will consider the different aspects of the circle in turn, beginning at home.

 

My mile-radius circle, centred on the Roeebuck Inn on Waterhouse Green (underneath the A6 label)

Sightings in my Garden

Over the years, my garden has hosted the full range of common ‘garden birds’. These tend to be species that normally inhabit wood or scrubland, and don’t mind the presence of others (though our cats tend to put them off!) My bird feeding station regularly hosts blue, great and coal tits, robins, dunnocks, blackbirds and song thrushes, chaffinches and goldfinches. Less commonly, a nuthatch will make an appearance, and every so often a pair of bullfinches, a blackcap, siskin or a goldcrest. Wrens are common, more often heard than seen, and little flocks of long-tailed tits will pass through. Wood pigeons live nearby and waddle onto the bird table, hoovering up most of what the resident grey squirrel has left. Magpies, collared doves and the occasional jay also try to fit themselves on. Very rarely a greater-spotted woodpecker has put in an appearance. Less expected visitors include mallards from the nearby river Lostock and pheasants, blissfully unaware of their luck at choosing a non-meat-eating household.

 

A nuthatch takes over my bird table

A male pheasant inspects the pickings at my feeding station

 

These are the birds that I regularly see today, but some once common species are now rare in my garden. House sparrows used to be too frequent to notice, but now only occasionally visit the garden, and do not stay. Starlings would in times past congregate en masse on my bird table (or the television ariel on my roof), but have not done so for some time. Greenfinches were once so common that they were included in a list of the ’10 most boring birds’, but they are now rare, decimated by a disease, ironically passed on in part by poorly maintained bird tables.

 

Looking beyond the bird-feeding station, other once regularly seen birds do not come by very often. House martins were once common, and we were delighted when they built their nests on our soffit boards (a former neighbour would knock the nests off his eaves with a pole). There have been no nests on our house for many years. Similarly, swallows would screech past, and would rest on the telegraph wires outside our house, but no longer. We do however still see swifts high in the sky on clear summer evenings, and on warm nights with the bedroom window open we regularly hear the hoots of tawny owls.

 

Other birds still fly unconcernedly over our house. Rooks and jackdaws flock over their nearby roosts and herring gulls, and the occasional lesser black backed gull glide by, as do carrion crows. Occasionally I hear the guttural call of a raven. Buzzards have become increasingly common, circling over our house like would-be vultures. From time to time, skeins of pink-foot geese fly over.

 

Birders like to see raptors, such as buzzards, but last summer I had first-hand experience of what it means to host a raptor. Several times, I found in my garden the horribly dismembered and half-eaten remains of wood pigeons. The neatly-plucked and discarded piles of feathers next to the corpses confirmed that they had been victims of a sparrowhawk. I once saw one in the garden, stood on the lawn with its wing shielding its prey from view – nature red in tooth and claw.

 

Finally, one rarity – at least for a suburban garden. There is a clump of trees opposite our bedroom window and one spring in the early 1990s a male pied flycatcher took up residence there, and for a week sang his distinctive mating song. Sadly, he did not attract a mate and moved on – and I have never seen this species since!

 

The male pied flycatcher that for a week or so called for a mate from a tree outside my bedroom window. Sadly, there was no response!

Water Birds

The river Lostock runs near my house. Some characteristic river birds can be seen, if you are lucky. Dippers and kingfishers are resident on the Lostock, though their extensive feeding ranges mean that they don’t stay in one place for long. Grey wagtails also lurk by the waterside, waving their yellowish tails. Grey herons can be seen regularly by the Leeds-Liverpool and Lancaster canals, and mallards, moorhens, black-headed gulls, mute swans and Canada geese are also common. A few weeks ago I saw a small group of goosanders on the Leeds-Liverpool canal, and I have seen a common tern and a cormorant flying over the locks of Johnson’s Hillock. Other birds use the canals for feeding, in particular swallows. I generally reckon to see the first swallows of the year over the canal on or around the 18^th of April, though last year they were few in numbers.

 

A group of goosander on the Leeds-Liverpool canal

The truncated Lancaster canal is a haven for mallard, moorhens and Canada geese

Hedges, Bushes and Woodland

I noted earlier that most garden birds are really birds of wood or shrubland, using the trees and bushes in our gardens as nest sites, or perches to reach bird tables. I therefore see many little songbirds while out walking round the local paths and lanes. The only sizeable wood within my mile-radius circle is the relatively newly planted Whittle Spinney, off Chorley Old Road, but there are plenty of other patches of woodland scattered about, and many roads and lanes are lined by old trees and hedges. House sparrows, which tend to stay in groups concealed in hedges, can still be heard and seen along Town Lane and beside the Leeds-Liverpool canal, among other places. Other wood or hedge-dwelling birds that don’t often visit gardens are also present, such as chiff chaffs, woodpeckers, tree creepers, mistle thrushes and willow warblers (these gather each summer at Denham Hill quarry, just outside my circle). In the past, a clump of trees near my house would fill up with redwings in snowy weather, but I haven’t seen them in recent years. A bird that has become common in city parks, but is still rare in semi-rural areas, the ring-necked parakeet, makes an occasional appearance. Finally, some spectacular rookeries can be seen in leafless winter trees.

 

A buzzard shelters from a storm in trees near Waterhouse Green

A rookery in a tree behind Chorley Old Road

In Fields and Flying over them

Most of our local fields are grassland, with some patches of arable around Lisieux Hall. Corvids (crows, rooks, jackdaws, magpies) feed widely across the area. Sometimes one can see fast-moving flocks of finches in stubbly areas, including chaffinches, goldfinches and linnets, and in winter small flocks of fieldfares pass through. Other birds are best seen in the air, such as the now-ubiquitous buzzards, and kestrels, which used to far outnumber them. Once, a year or two ago, I saw a red kite flying near the canal, far from the species’ usual haunts, and occasionally on the higher ground on the way to Brindle one can see a peregrine falcon or hear curlews. Swallows are also best seen these days in the uplands, particularly around Holt Lane and Huggarts farms.

 

A couple of ground-nesting birds sometimes use local fields. Lapwings were once common, but changes in farming practice have endangered them by compromising their nest sites. Occasional birds can still sometimes be seen, carrying out their diving displays in spring. Still more unusually, a pair of oystercatchers made a nest last year in a field near Dawson Lane.

 

Buckshaw Village

Buckshaw Village is of course built on the huge site of the former Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF), which during its working life was cut off and the surrounding countryside relatively undisturbed. To an extent, this is still reflected in Buckshaw’s bird life, with species that must have thrived in the ROF trying to exist in the new town. For some years, a skylark regularly sang over the carpark at Tesco’s, though sadly it has gone now. Oystercatchers can be seen in late spring feeding on the roundabouts that have been planted with wild flowers. Pied wagtails commonly stride along the middle of roads, and little flocks of starlings (not quite big enough to count as ‘murmurations’) are these days more common in Buckshaw than in other places. Overall, of course, a dramatic amount of development has happened within my mile-radius circle over the past thirty years, and is continuing, with huge implications for the local bird life.

 

Cuerden Valley Park

One area that – to date – has resisted development is the southern end of Cuerden Valley Park. But the bird life here has also undergone changes. Species that I used to regularly see when walking through the park have now gone. There were once lines of yellowhammers sitting on the telephone wires that paralleled the paths, but no longer. Sand martins once peppered the banks of the river Lostock with their nest holes and flew in swarms around the river, but I’ve not noticed any recently. Years ago, I sometimes saw grey partridge in the fields and once both heard and saw a cuckoo on a fence post. But the gradual reduction in diversity has affected the park as well as other places, so that while there may well be as many birds in the area as there once were, the range of species has diminished.

 

The restored lodge at Lower Kem Mill in Cuerden Valley Park hosts mallard, moorhens and grey herons

Conclusion: Responding to Stephen Moss

So, tallying up all my sightings, how close have I got to Stephen Moss’s 100 species within a mile of my house? Well, before I reveal the final score, what have I not seen? Mainly, it’s water birds. Some species can be found tantalisingly close to the outer limit of my circle, such as the coots and great crested grebes found on the lake near Cuerden Hall. Whittle is of course a long way from the sea, so apart from the occasional nesting wader, or the passing species that I have mentioned, many maritime birds can’t be counted.

 

Also, as I have pointed out, the range of species today is different, and overall smaller than it used to be. House martins, yellowhammers, cuckoos and other species are apparently absent from Whittle today. Starlings, swallows, sparrows and greenfinches are much less common than they were. Thankfully, some species are noticeably growing in numbers, such as goldfinches and buzzards and it may be that new species will find their way into the area (perhaps little egrets?)

 

But my score to date: 71 species. Some way to go then to catch up with Stephen Moss, but a testimony to what can (or could) be seen in one semi-rural, semi-suburban area with a bird table, a pair of binoculars and a reasonably open eye.

 

My 71 species and where I saw them!