Wildlife is worried, George

GEORGE OSBORNE’S autumn Budget Statement came as a kick in the teeth to Yorkshire’s wildlife.

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is deeply frustrated with the Chancellor’s proposal to review the protection afforded to wildlife in England.

The removal of protection for some of Yorkshire’s most iconic wild places – Spurn Point, Flamborough Head and Yorkshire’s limestone pavements – is simply unthinkable; we are entering troubling times.

The trust’s chief executive, Dr Rob Stoneman, is deeply worried by the development, saying: “We welcomed the Government’s White Paper which put nature at its heart. However, the opposite now seems to be the case and the Government risks going down as the one that trashed the British countryside.”

Mr Osborne appears to believe that the protection of our most important wildlife sites by the European Habitats Directive is acting as a brake on development. There is no evidence that this is the case.

We can have jobs, birds and flowers if we site development in the right place. Take the limestone pavements around Malham and Southerscales. These stunning landscapes attract huge numbers of visitors to Yorkshire each year as a key part of the Dales experience: they are an economic asset.

Near York, in the Lower Derwent Valley, wildlife conservation works hand in hand with the farming community.

There are challenges, but with a little thought and goodwill, both wildlife and people can benefit. Those of us with Yorkshire’s wildlife at heart fear turbulent times ahead.

The weather has been quite unsettled too, with spells of cold frost and ice interspersed with milder air. Following heavy rain and even some snow in the Dales, the low-lying meadows along the River Ouse, known as ‘ings’, flooded early in December.

Walking the edges of these ephemeral marshes near York led to sightings of quite a number of snipe. One morning, I even flushed a diminutive jack snipe, which leapt up at the last minute, virtually from under my feet.

Without a sound, it flew straight away, before banking and dropping back to the water’s edge.

This behaviour is quite unlike the larger common snipe, which usually towers high into the sky calling. Jack snipe spend the winter in the UK, having bred in Scandinavia and Russia. Thanks to their cryptic plumage and shy habits, it is difficult to assess how many spend the cold months with us.

If you are lucky enough to see one without flushing, they have an incredible bouncing gait, as if on springs. It is unclear what this bobbing achieves, but my view is that it mimics the swaying rushes and grasses that it feeds among, thus breaking up its outline to potential predators.

And there are certainly plenty of predators about! With shorter days, diurnal predators have a reduced amount of time to find food, so it can be an incredibly tough time.

For the wildlife watcher, this can give us the chance to witness lots of activity. If you feed birds in your garden, you may play host to a fleeting visit by a sparrowhawk.

We get many calls about birds of prey in people’s gardens – the mystery bird usually turns out to be a sparrowhawk. It can be upsetting to witness one of these birds catch and kill a local blackbird or robin, but this species can only survive where the numbers of prey are sufficiently high enough, otherwise they would starve.

Cats can be a major problem in gardens, although they are probably less inclined to hunt in cold weather. A way to minimise the impact of a hunting cat is to position your bird feeders away from cover where the cat may hide and if you are an owner, to keep your cat in at dawn and dusk when birds are most vulnerable.

Further afield, there has been a sighting of a rough-legged buzzard, another Scandinavian visitor, around Crockey Hill, Wheldrake and Escrick. This area also hosts several common buzzards which now breed around York and feed on the local rabbit population. Two peregrines and a red kite have also been sighted by birders searching for the rough-leg.

The influx of geese mentioned last month continues, with numbers building up at Nosterfield Gravel Pits near Knaresborough to a high of 60 tundra bean geese and 80 European white-fronted geese, the weekend before Christmas.

Also more than 200 white-fronted geese and 19 tundra bean geese have been seen near YWT Wheldrake Ings.

A Happy New Year from all the staff at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust – please don’t forget to feed the birds.

• To find out more, including the latest wildlife sightings, campaigns, photos, news and events from around the county, check out Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s website ywt.org.uk, find them on facebook or follow @YorksWildlife on twitter.