Moorland thrives as falcons fly high for grouse

On a beautiful autumn day a speck moves at lightning speed across blue skies over the North York Moors.

Far below, some pointers are being directed through the heather with whistles in search of red grouse.

Suddenly, one of the dogs comes to an abrupt halt. It stands absolutely dead still, like a statue, its nostrils sifting the crisp autumnal air, and then it sets off again to follow the scent of a bird.

Very soon the grouse is flushed from its hiding place and it rockets across the moor, well beyond the reach of the pointer.

Up in the sky, however, the speck is now dropping like a stone.Birdwatchers and falconers call this rapid descent a “stoop”.

With hardly a beat of its wings, the falcon meets its quarry in mid-air with laser-like precision.

The grouse is killed instantly. Yet barely a feather of its plumage seems to have been disturbed when Ralph Watt picks it up and puts it into his bag. The cleanness of the kill, he says, contrasts with the mess that is often made by lead pellets discharged from a shotgun.

It is the first kill of the day for the falconers who lease Levisham Moor from its owners, the North York Moors National Park.

These are not the Eton and Harrow-educated, double-barrel-named scions of the English upper classes you might normally associate with the pursuit of game birds across moors like this, however.

They count among their number an electrician, a builder’s labourer and a salesman.

They are members of the British Falconers’ Club, who 13 years ago set up the Levisham Moor Group and took the sporting lease of a huge area of moorland on the west side of the A169 Pickering to Whitby road.

The National Park wanted the land managed in a way that would maintain the heather and traditional moorland wildlife.

It was decided that shooting would not be appropriate in such an accessible and sensitive part of the North York Moors.

The group’s work has resulted in a remarkable reversal of fortunes for the moor.

When the falconers took the lease in 1999 the population of red grouse was in the teens, and just about the only other creatures living there were adders.

Now, the latest grouse count estimates there are between 300 and 400 on the moor.

Other birds have flourished, too under the falconers’ regime.

Curlews, lapwing, golden plovers and common snipe breed here, and they have attracted visiting birds of prey like peregrine, merlin and hen harrier.

In order to provide a reliable source of water, the group constructed a pond – named Hawkers Pond on the latest Ordnance Survey maps – which has in turn been colonised by water voles.

Their work has earned the group a nomination in the prestigious Purdey game conservation awards run by the famous gun maker James Purdey & Son.

They will find out if they have been successful when the winners are announced at an awards ceremony in London on Thursday.

Most members of the group live a two-hour drive away in the West and South Yorkshire areas,.

But outside the grouse season - which starts on the “Glorious Twelfth” of August and finishes on December 10 – they spend most weekends doing management work on the moor.

The main task is the rotational burning of heather.This involves burning small patches at a time to create a mosaic of different heights.

As a consequence there is short heather for young grouse to feed on and longer heather on either side to provide cover from predators such as crows.

Predator control, always a sensitive issue on grouse moors, is done by a part-time gamekeeper.

The gamekeeper sets larsen traps for crows and fen traps for weasels and stoats and is funded by a Higher Level Stewardship grant. There are strict rules about the length of time traps can be left unattended. Since most of the group’s members live a distance away, in places like Halifax and Bradford, it would have been impossible for them to undertake the predator control themselves.

On a glorious autumn afternoon, the beneficial results of their work is there for all to see.

A couple of minutes after leaving their 4X4s, the party of falconers puts up a flock of 40-plus golden plovers, and a snipe rises noisily from a piece of marshy ground.

But it’s the grouse that they have come for, and the falconers take it in turns to fly their birds.

There’s good reason for that. Two raptors in the sky at the same time would probably lead to the birds fighting each other rather than hunting their quarry.

The falcons are mostly peregrines, or hybrids of peregrines, with their Icelandic cousins, gyr falcons.

They can cost thousands of pounds. All of them have been bred in captivity and trained to hunt in exchange for food rewards when they return to the falconer’s glove.

Steve Smith, an electrician from Halifax, came to falconry after years of birdwatching.

“This is posh birdwatching, really,” he says.

“It’s the opportunity to see and admire the flying dexterity and hunting skills of the peregrine falcon at very close quarters.”

His eight-year-old peregrine, Paulo, has taken numerous grouse in his flying career.

But on this day it disappears from view on Levisham Moor and Steve has to track it down using an aerial to home in on a tiny radio transmitter attached to the bird.

Other members release their falcons, but it turns out to be an unproductive outing. Only two grouse are killed.

Shooting on grouse moors is now big business and thousands of birds are shot each year.

On Levisham Moor they take very few birds. Just one grouse was killed with every ten flights by the falconers.

“The returns are small but the value to us is huge,” Steve says.

“It’s not about killing grouse, it’s the sport. The grouse are so wily they test our falcons to the absolute extreme.”

The group’s secretary, Julian Hepburn, says: “I hope the award nomination will raise public awareness towards the positive, active role which sportsmen such as falconers play in maintaining the environment and protecting wildlife.

“We would like others to be encouraged by our example and take part in helping to conserve the beauty of the North York Moors.”