Emily Graham: Stories from the Moors - the Good, the Bad, and the Fluffy [10 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

Sharing some of my personal experiences and stories from the moors of ground nesting birds, their parenting skills and what I have learnt along the way!

One of the Scribehound team once told me that one has 3 seconds to capture to someone's attention on social media otherwise they move on. A rather sad but true indictment of our society today. The irony is not lost on me when comparing the hours I spend with moorland birds.

My favourite and best technique is to try and spend time with them with the car switched off, allowing them to settle down and resume their normal behaviour as a pair of birds or a young family. I can sometimes spend an hour or more with a particular species and this is when the best photographs are often achieved which may or may not grab someone's attention in those few seconds.

Whether that or those images grab anyone's attention or not, for me a benefit of time on the fell with these birds is getting to observe and learn about each species particular behaviour and that of their young.

As someone who spends a lot of their time with birds, I certainly have my favourites and have witnessed lots of behaviours in different species. For example, the oystercatcher is by far one of the best parents on the moor, whereas the lapwing is probably one of the worst! These are some of my personal experiences when out on the moors with some of our incredible UK wildlife.