Yesterday, running off Ill Bell on the Kentmere horseshoe my daughter glimpsed a raptor landing just to her left and stopped. I was 10m behind and would have missed it. A chance in a life time.
We watched the peregrine while it occasionally preened. It was unconcerned by our presence and I wondered at first if it was an escape but when we got closer we could see the downy feathers around its neck and concluded it was a juvenile. Unafraid of humans. When it did eventually move, one thrust and it was scything through the wind.
I had only once seen a peregrine as close but then only for an instant. Climbing a new route on Binnein Shuas with Doug Lang, we had passed an old nest and I was sitting on a ledge, feet dangling into the void, when a peregrine dived down the crag to take a closer look. For a fraction of a second it was within 5 foot of me, eyeball to eyeball. Yesterday’s peregrine by comparison appeared completely dis-interested, gifting us time to observe and marvel.
I would never have anticipated having such an encounter on a popular route in the sheep wrecked Lake District National Park but then nature is like that, it surprises. If our uplands weren’t so overgrazed and burnt there would be more birds, more food and experiences like this with raptors would be more common. At present there is no more likelihood of having an encounter such as this in a National Park as opposed to elsewhere – indeed probably less in some due to persecution – but it shouldn’t be like that. National Parks, whether in Scotland or England, should be wilder, better places for nature and for enabling people to have those once in a life-time experiences.
WOW! What a wonderful experience!!
Glad you enjoyed your once in a lifetime experience.
Somewhat disingenuous though either that or I have multiple lives.
Last week alone on the “overgrazed and burnt” uplands as you put it on a shooting estate, I have seen 20 plus Redkites, buzzards, golden Eagle oh and an Osprey catching a 4-6 oz fish.
Then there was the roe deer suckling her fawn.
The grouse chick’s scuttling about in the heather
Woodcock
Swans, geese
Then there was the rat catching and killing a young rabbit.
May I suggest you get out of Glasgow a little more often
What a greetin-faced piece, can’t help taking a pop while enjoying the free experience on the hill.
I know that is why to call it out.
Man, I forgot the six swifts tail chasing like Top Gun Maverick, multiple swallows and housemartins while sitting out in the evening.
The woodpecker chicks are some noisy in the hollow dead birch too. Fair keep their parents busy.
And the 4 barn owl chicks are growing albeit one is falling behind.
At a loss as to how it happens in these “overgrazed and burnt” uplands.
If only Glasgow had this diversity, let alone the golden plover with chicks, then yes many more would not think of it a a once in a lifetime experience eh?
Glasgow has most of the biodiversity you mention – I regularly see and hear greater spotted woodpecker in Pollok Park, swifts and swallows fly over my local pond (though numbers are seem fewer year by year) – we have buzzards and foxes are common unlike in the uplands. In fact cities are increasingly reserves for what biodiversity is left, hence the importance RSPB and other conservation organisations put on gardens. Yes, Glasgow doesn’t have golden plover but as you says its not rare to be able to get close to their chicks while out on the hills. What is rare is to get up close to raptors like peregrine or eagle, except of course for those people who deliberately hunt them out to kill them.
“What is rare is to get up close to raptors like peregrine or eagle, except of course for those people who deliberately hunt them out to kill them.” Nick Kempe
Not where I live it ain’t,. Kite less than 20 feet away yesterday. Barn owl still has her brood, Osprey still catching fish and the Eagle still fly over.
Perhaps you may wish to reduce the tar loading on your brush unless you are suggesting something about myself.
Nice to Troll, but you will find a greater depth of biodiversity in Glasgow than you will in most of highland Scotland, in fact i would put money on it. Walk at night and you will find numerous fox roaming the streets, sometimes even in the clyde tunnel, barn owls flying across the canal, hedgehog in back garden. I spotted an oyster catcher in Anniesland last week, and we have Otters and Salmon on the Kelvin. Wildflowers aplenty, list goes on.
The saddest part is you will find natural tree regeneration all across the city and the central belt, not going to see that anywhere in the highlands.
Well I stay in a city but I bet I see far more upland ground than most grousey boot-lickers.
I cover over 1,000km of upland terrain each year, all year round, much of it off the beaten path, and I agree with the general observation of ““overgrazed and burnt” uplands. One can travel vast miles without seeing any wildlife, sure it’s possible to cherry pick the odd locality that hasn’t been scoured within an inch of it’s life, but the majority of those huge areas of upland are pretty barren.
This weekend I did see one cluster of mountain hares: in a remote glen I had a look inside a ruin of an old derelict cottage. The back room had a surprise: a festering stew of bone and fur: dozens of dead mountain hares, shot, fecklessly dumped and rotting away, a litter of spent shotgun cartridges scattered around. An atrocious mess, and not quite the idyllic image of moorland wildlife the gun-creeps would have you believe, but this type of thing is the reality of upland shooting “land management”.