Dartmoor Highlights - and a question of ethics

The Common Redstart (above) may be Britain's most attractive summer visitor, but it's getting increasingly difficult to track one down. In Dorset, where I'm based, they are very scarce breeders, more usually seen passing through the county on migration. Which makes the perfect excuse for a birding excursion over the border into Devon. 

A spring visit to Dartmoor is an annual event in my birding calendar - see this post from a couple of years ago. Two locations take centre stage. My first stop this morning was Yarner Wood, which has the honour of being England's first National Nature Reserve (NNR), established in 1952. Now expanded into the East Dartmoor NNR, the site is managed by Natural England. A leaflet about the reserve can be downloaded here (1.9MB).

The oak woods at Yarner are positively festooned with bird and bat boxes. The first nestboxes that I came across were all occupied by Blue Tits, and the busy comings and goings of the parents showed that nestlings were in residence. But further up the track a dart of black and white revealed the presence of a male Pied Flycatcher (below). He perched conveniently close to the path:

Pied Flycatcher (male) - Yarner Wood, Devon, UK

Nationally, Pied Flycatcher number have decreased massively - a 53% drop between 1995 and 2023 (see the data from the British Trust for Ornithology here), although losses appear to have levelled off - possibly as a result of nestbox provision in places like Yarner Wood. My non-scientific impression this morning was that numbers seem similar to my previous visits.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Wood Warblers, which the official NNR leaflet says that Yarner is 'famous' for. Not now, I'm afraid. It's many years since I last saw or heard a Wood Warbler there - and none were apparent this morning.

My second destination of the morning was Emsworthy Mire, a Devon Wildlife Trust reserve at the head a valley just below Haytor. The sun was out, but a sharp wind was blowing.

  

View over Emsworthy Mire, Dartmoor. Haytor in the distance.

I could hear a singing Common Redstart as I entered the reserve, following the path that winds between a network of dry stone walls that mark out the site of this former farm. Some of the fields contained a stunning display of Bluebells - the best that I've seen there.

Bluebells at Emsworthy Mire

On previous visits I have watched Redstarts in the vicinity of the old barn that sits roughly in the centre of the reserve. It is surrounded by mature trees (mostly Sycamore) which contrast markedly with the more windblown Hawthorn and Ash dotted around the fields. As I approached the barn, I saw that a couple of other guys with cameras had beaten me to it. A female Common Redstart hopped onto a stone wall, but speedily disappeared. A male then flew up into a nearby tree ...

... and then descended to perch on an old stone wall right in front of me:

Common Redstart (male) - Emsworthy Mire, Devon

This was fantastic, although I couldn't help but wonder why he had come so close to the path. The answer was soon apparent:

Common Redstart with mealworms (not placed there by me)

Mealworms do not naturally inhabit the top of stone walls, and one of the photographers must have placed them there. My initial feeling was one of disappointment, as I was not observing the bird's natural behaviour. But then again, I was pleased to get such good views and I'm very happy with the resulting images. It's a bit of an ethical dilemma.

To be clear, I would never bait a site in order to obtain a photograph - but then photography has never been my prime motivation when watching birds (or indeed any other wildlife). Having said that, it's always very satisfying to have a nice picture that records the things that I have seen, and in some cases such a photo can also act as a useful identification tool. Before writing this blog post, I had a bit of an online dive into various birding websites and forums and I see that my dilemma is shared by many. A good example is this article by Pete Garrity, which rehearses these arguments (and more) in some detail; I certainly agree with his key take-home message that the welfare of the bird must come first. There is a similar conclusion in a thoughtful blog by Adam Juckes, who emphasises (correctly in my view) that much depends on the particular circumstances of each case.

As it happens, supplementary feeding is in the news at the moment, with the well-publicised change of stance by the RSPB - link here (in summary: feed seasonally, feed safely).  The spread of diseases like trichomonosis is part of the problem, but recent research also has highlighted the potential for ecological harm to arise from the provision of additional food in certain circumstances - for example by giving a competitive advantage to bird-feeder visitors (like Great Tits) over declining insect-feeders (like Pied Flycatchers) (Broughton et al., 2021). I've stopped putting out bird feeders in my garden for this reason. But we have to acknowledge that in the wider world, supplementary feeding is well established - many (if not most) eco-lodges in the Neotropics will have fruit and nectar feeding stations for toucans, tanagers, hummingbirds and the like - and I have spent many happy hours watching (and indeed photographing) the birds that visit them. 

There are no easy answers, and in many cases it will simply be a case of fact and degree. The occasional baiting of a site like Emsworthy is unlikely to cause material harm and may indeed provide some benefit to the bird(s) concerned. The Common Redstart seemed happy enough to accept an easy meal. In an ideal world, photographers using this method should perhaps 'come clean' as to how they obtained their image, but that might be asking too much!

But as soon as a rare and infrequent practice becomes widespread then alarm bells should start to ring. At that point, some thought needs to be given about the likely effect on the species concerned. This becomes particularly important when birds are the subject of conservation concern, a factor that is recognised in the UK by various laws (unnecessarily complicated in my view, but that's a separate discussion) that protect certain species - notably Schedule 1 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 (as amended) (explained here) in respect of breeding birds. As it happens, Common Redstart is not (at time of writing) a Schedule 1 bird, but its range has declined in recent years along with a slight population decrease (information from the BTO on this is here. To me, this suggests that we should think very hard when carrying out actions like supplementary feeding that could affect its natural breeding behaviour. But perhaps I'm being over-cautious. And clearly there are many more pressing problems affecting wild birds such as habitat loss, climate change, pesticide use, agricultural intensification, hunting ... the list goes on.

My visit to Emsworthy finished on a less controversial note. I didn't linger by the barn, heading off instead on the circular route that runs around Emsworthy Mire. I was near to the south-western corner of the reserved when I finally heard the call of a male Cuckoo nearby. He was easy to locate:

Cuckoo male - Emsworthy Mire

  And he wasn't alone. A female was nearby, resting on a fencepost:

Cuckoo female - Emsworthy Mire

Neither of these are great photos, but I was keeping my distance in a landscape that offered very little natural cover. Not that the Cuckoos appeared unduly bothered; they were more occupied with each other - the male calling loudly and flying after the female when she moved further along the fence line. At the same time, both Cuckoos were being repeatedly mobbed by other birds - mostly Meadow Pipits. You can understand why, of course, although what baffles me is that the same birds fail to recognise a giant Cuckoo chick in their own nest. There is much of interest in the life of the Cuckoo. 

My last view of was of both Cuckoos sitting almost side by side further along the fence (below). Note the Meadow Pipit on the middle post. Both birds then flew away across the moor.

Reference

Broughton, R. Shutt, J. and Lees, A. (2021) 'Rethinking bird feeding: are we

putting extra pressure on some struggling woodland birds?' British Birds, 115 (1). pp. 2-6.