Dales proves a stronghold for the curlew
Curlews are leaving the moors where they have spent the summer.
Flocks of them can be seen making their way to estuaries and salt marshes where they will be joined by curlews from other parts of Europe and Scandinavia.
Apart from the Lapwing this is our best known wader with its haunting call and long down curved bill.
The UK holds about a third of the European population and here the Yorkshire Dales National Park is increasingly important to the curlew's long term future.
In most other parts of Britain curlew numbers have plummeted but in the Yorkshire Dales National Park numbers are stable, bucking the national trend.
But, thanks to the efforts of the National Park, other landowners and gamekeepers, the area continues to be the main stronghold for curlews with nationally important numbers of breeding pairs,
Yorkshire curlews are also playing an important role in attempts to reintroduce the birds elsewhere.
This involves techniques such as 'head starting' where eggs are removed nests that are judged to be vulnerable such as those near footpaths or in fields where the grass will be cut before the chicks are ready to leave the nest,
Many of the eggs are from Yorkshire nests and are incubated here for a few weeks before being taken south to the Emley nature reserve on the Isle of Sheppey.
Emley,and two other reserves, are part of theSouth of England Curlew Project
which has been running for three years and the curlew chicks will be released here this month.
Next Spring conservationists will be looking out in the hope of seeing curlews released earlier in the scheme returning when they are mature enough to breed themselves- a reward for all the hard work in Yorkshire and Kent.
Another success in the Dales, three ospreys have been hatched this year on the Castle Bolton estate near Leyburn in Wensleydale. The first pair in hundreds of years bred on the estate in 2022.