Under the Changing Skies

Return of the butterscotch humbugs

PRAWLE POINT, DEVON

This flock of chattering farmland birds is delightful enough in itself. It's also the sign of a conservation success story

Up ahead, beneath dried splinters of cut kale, the ground appears to shift. A ripple of small birds is working its way through the stubble in the morning sun, foraging on fallen seed. Occasionally, they raise their heads, striped like humbugs, the colour of caramel or butterscotch, and I count quickly, scarcely able to believe my luck.

I came to this sloping stretch of farmland on the south Devon coast in the hope of spotting just one of these rare, sparrow-sized birds. Instead, I'm watching a chattering flock of at least a dozen.

They are cirl buntings - pronounced 'sirl' - and these close relatives of the yellowhammer have every reason to sound chirpy. Once spread across thirty-nine counties, cirl buntings drained from the countryside during the twentieth century as agricultural practices intensified, leaving just over a hundred pairs in the West Country. In the 1990s, the RSPB launched a desperate bid to save the species from UK extinction, working with local farmers to ensure hedge-lined fields and coastal scrub were providing sufficient food and nesting sites.

It worked - these yellow and brown buntings now number more than a thousand pairs, strung out along the southern edge of Devon and Cornwall. And while still far from common (they remain the UK's rarest resident farmland bird), the cirl bunting embodies something every bit as scarce these days: a wildlife good news story.

They fly to a nearby blackthorn bush overlooking the sea, perching in the sunshine, seeming to enjoy the mild weather and companionship of their kind. Among them, a handsome male in brighter breeding plumage, sporting stencil-sharp black-and-lemon head stripes.

The cirl bunting may sound like an obscurity for the ornithological connoisseur, with its peculiar name of Italian origin and restricted range, but this is now a species anyone can encounter along the South West Coast Path, well accustomed to passing hikers and dog walkers.

Every one of these little beacons of hope, lighting up the hedgerows, is a cause for optimism. Roll out the bunting and celebrate this conservation success.

Charlie Elder, 2022

Trouble beneath the blackthorn

LONG DEAN, COTSWOLDS

Despite the air of contentment among our small herd of North Devons, one of them is not well

The cattle are scattered across the top of the bank, their winter coats burnished russet by the light. They know this south-facing side receives the fullness of the sun. Below me, a pheasant senses disturbance, hunches low and scuttles. I note with apprehension the freshly scratched-up patches where a badger has rummaged through the dung for worms - TB is a constant concern.

From the empty ring feeder comes the scent, redolent of a beach at low tide, of the mineral supplement we add to the hay each day. Fed before dawn, the beasts now lie cudding, eyes half closed, content. A calf from last year stands alone, nibbling bramble leaves, more bored by the idleness than hungry.

I move among them familiarly; all were born on the farm, handled from an early age. These are heifers and cows at varying stages of pregnancy, and the core of our small suckler herd of North Devons. From time to time they will lean back, tilting their bulk of calf-containing belly to the sky, then right themselves again with a great exhalation.

I approach one, examining her eyes, feet, nascent teats. I move her tail aside and see a thick strand of dark, discoloured membrane hanging from her vulva. Her breathing continues with patient rhythm, but mine catches. She has aborted. I rest my hand on the soft warmth of her haunch, and sit with her for a moment in the stillness of the morning.

A blood sample identifies a parasitic organism called Neospora. Carried by the canine species and shed in their faeces, this is increasingly an aggravation for farmers who graze livestock on land with public footpaths. It is without cure; once infected, the animal remains infected and will repeatedly abort. Her breeding life is over.

Farming is subject to many variables and, as in life itself, not all exposure to risk can be controlled. There are rich benefits for a herd that is permanently at pasture, but the close cohabitation with nature sometimes has a cost. How we delighted in the summer to see a vixen rearing her cubs in an abandoned badger sett; how we now rue that she chose to make her den there, beneath the tunnelled blackthorn, where the cattle so often sought sanctuary from the tyranny of flies and heat.

Sarah Laughton, 2022

A tranquil scene that masks a dark contest

MORELAND'S MEADOW, BELFAST, COUNTY ANTRIM

The sex life of mallards is aggressive and highly unusual among birds, and has led to a remarkable evolutionary development

An eruption of quacks from a female mallard draws my gaze up the River Lagan. Two pairs. Further on, two single males. Familiarity can breed a dismissive 'Oh, it's just a .' but the mallard drake is a splendid creature - the bottle-green head; the primary-yellow bill; the thin white collar over his chocolate-coloured breast. The finely vermiculated porcelain-grey and taupe that sweep down to the rump, with its upturned kiss-curls and white wedge of tail. His mate's plumage is an embroidery of browns, but she shares with him a bright blue flash on the wing's secondary flight feathers, called the speculum.

The reeds stir. Three more drakes emerge on to the open water. A loitering female swims away quickly to catch up with her mate. Her caution is wise. This tranquil scene masks a dark contest.

The sex ratio of mallard populations is skewed towards males, and surplus males gang up to bully females into what biologists coyly term 'forced copulation'. It's something I still find disturbing. Female mallards usually resist, but can even end up drowning. Sticking close to one's mate offers some protection until the ducklings hatch, whereupon their father decamps, perhaps to join a gang of marauding bachelors.

Drakes succeed in mating with unwilling females partly because, as an evolutionarily ancient group, duck species have retained the avian penis, which is highly unusual among birds (for most species, sperm transfer relies on a co-operative genital 'kiss').

But that's not the whole story. Nature has contrived to provide female mallards with inbuilt contraception. The vagina has a spiral that counters unwelcome penetration by a male's corkscrew-shaped penis (the spiral apparently relaxes when a female solicits copulation). It also has dead-end 'pouches' to receive unwanted sperm. An undesired male may win the battle, but he usually loses the war.

So, while some mallard matings may be forced, only a tiny proportion of such matings successfully father ducklings. The female's discerning choice prevails. And it's that choice - what gladdens her eye and, over the generations, likewise gladdened her foremothers' - that has evolved to this extravagant male beauty.

Mary Montague, 2022

The strange tranquillity of an aqueduct

PONTCYSYLLTE, WRECSAM

It is a dreamlike experience to watch a narrowboat float in the impossible space between the treetops

There is a shadow-life to things. From the iron rail at the edge of the aqueduct, the abyss plunges through trees down to the river. Low winter sunlight casts shadows of the piers (pillars), like the ribcage of some great creature straddling the gorge. This massive shadow seems to move, to have a life, an animus free of the stone and iron that make this wonder of the industrial age.

At 38 metres above the River Dee, Pontcysyllte is the highest navigable aqueduct in the world. Its eighteen piers span 307 metres, carrying the 'stream in the sky' - the Llangollen Canal - across the Vale of Llangollen. Yes, it is an engineering feat worthy of its UNESCO World Heritage Site status, but it is not just the genius of engineers such as Thomas Telford that should be recognised, but the lives of all the workers and their families who toiled for years after the first stone was laid in 1795, a dangerous place where many died.

It also stands for those bargees and their horses and canal folk who plied the waterways around the country. Wood smoke rises from the narrowboats of those who inherit that nomadic life. There is a piddling sound as water leaks from a cast-iron joint into the void below. The canal's water level is maintained by Horseshoe Falls, a weir on the Dee beyond Llangollen. Water diverted into the canal, through nature's shadow engineering, is returning to the river.

The aqueduct's shadow is the kind of spirit thing that in superstitions changes the destiny of what, or who, it touches....