I seldom regret an early start, but still, it’s hard to do. This morning, I’m incentivised by a commitment to a citizen science effort monitoring four farmland birds of particular concern. I have two transects to walk at dawn, across a square covering the edge of the North York Moors escarpment and the steep and glorious Garbutt Wood immediately below, managed by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. I’ve barely left the car park at Sutton Bank before the first of the quartet declares itself emphatically present: song thrush, herald of the day. Sunrise brings the second, a male yellowhammer like a drop of gold spilled from the crucible just after it clears the horizon. I have a few false starts on bird three, the common redstart. Willow warblers and chaffinches have similar tumbling phrases, and the wood abounds with them both.
As I descend a steep path of packed earth, polished roots and limestone, there’s a kerfuffle in the trees on the uphill side. I pause, and spot movement. The ground is rippling – a bow-wave of dead leaves surging towards me. After a few metres it stops, and a head appears, like a periscope. A stripy, black and white head.
I grew up in an England where badgers were rare enough to warrant conservation. Now there’s a sett just 100 metres from my front door, but I’ll never lose the thrill of a new encounter. This is a serpentine female. After a minute she emerges fully from the leaves and pauses to scan the surroundings – appearing to look right at me before continuing with such insouciance that there’s time to stop and sniff as she crosses the path.
A moment later I pick up a redstart, loud and clear, confirmed by the Merlin app that I’m becoming addicted to. In the same burst it helps me tease garden warbler from blackcap. I stop for a skinny dip in Gormire Lake – one of the best swimming spots in England, and by 6:30am I’m climbing the escarpment back to the visitor centre. The bird feeders there are one of the most reliable places for the fourth and, sadly, rarest bird, the turtle dove, but this is outside my allocated square. I leave with my ticklist incomplete, but my reserves of gratitude replenished.
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