Nightingales fall silent on Thorne Moors

This summer, for the first time for 34 years, there has not been a single record of a singing nightingale on Thorne Moors in South Yorkshire.

Staff at the site, which together with Hatfield and Crowle moors forms Natural England's Humberhead Peatlands reserve, are hoping that this year, like the summer of 1974, proves to be a one-off blip and that the nightingales will be back.

But the signs are not encouraging. There has been a national contraction in the nightingale's range so that concentrations are now limited to Kent, Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk while numbers have fallen nationally by 60 per cent between 1994 and 2007.

Nightingale numbers on Thorne Moors remained fairly constant for many years, with peaks of 13 singing males in 1990 and 1992 and a good start to the new millennium with 13 singing males in 2000 and

14 the following year.

But after that records became more erratic with just five males in 2004, 2005 and 2006, no more than three in 2007 and two in 2008.

There were only two isolated records last year.

It is sad to think that this last outpost of a bird once widespread in Yorkshire may have been lost.

Nelson's Birds of Yorkshire published in 1907 reports that nightingales bred in the Knaresborough and Harrogate areas and near Boroughbridge, Wakefield, Ackworth, Barnsley, Selby, Goole, York, Patrington and Beverley.

By the mid-20th century, all these places had been lost due to development such as housing or industry but now it seems that even fully protected sites such as Thorne Moors are not able to sustain them.

Reasons for their loss, along with other birds such as turtle doves, seem to lie on the African wintering grounds south of the Sahara.

A growing population, means that large areas of scrub in the Sahel region are being cleared and this, combined with climate changes, is allowing the desert to expand.

In Britain, another factor is the loss of woodland undergrowth because of grazing by deer, particularly the muntjac or barking deer.

Although these are still rarely seen on Thorne Moors they are a definite factor in the decline of nightingales at sites such as Minsmere.

Whatever the reason it would be sad to think that the only singing nightingales in Yorkshire from now on will be the occasional overshoot from one of the more southerly breeding sites.

They are still to be heard and seen each year at the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust's Whisby Nature Park at Thorpe on the Hill, near Lincoln, but even there numbers are gradually declining year-on-year.

Seawatchers along the Yorkshire coast reported a Cory's shearwater off Spurn and balearic and sooty shearwaters off Flamborough.

There have also been increasing numbers of Manx shearwaters, great and Arctic skuas and Arctic terns.

The first summer drake king eider remained off Filey Brigg while three quail continue to be heard in barley fields near the car park at Bempton Cliffs.

Seven ruddy shelducks were seen on the Humber at Whitton Sand.

Two honey buzzards have been showing from the raptor viewpoint at Wykeham Forest, while one was over the Potteric Carr reserve at Doncaster. A bittern and lesser spotted woodpecker were also seen on the reserve.