Country File: We are fortunate to have so much wild upland around us

COUNTRY FILE

I HADN'T even realised that we hadn't seen a skylark for so long until that long, persistent song reached our ears. Then, as if the years were wiped away, we craned our necks to peer upward and search the sky for the dark speck of the ascending bird.

After half a minute I had so many dark specks in my eyes I just had to give up. Any one of them may or may not have been my skylark. It was enough just to hear him, and imagine the superb view he must enjoy from his high vantage.

It is easy to confuse the lark with the meadow pipit. The two look similar. They share the same habitat. Their nests look the same, and to the untrained ear there is little to differentiate the song of one from the other.

There is, however, one certain way to know which bird we have before us.

The skylark climbs high into the heavens, singing each step of the way, and when he has enough work done he falls gently back to his perch, doing so silently, as if his very song has made him mute.

The meadow pipit also climbs high, though perhaps not as far, but claims his podium place before he opens his beak, then sings his way back to earth.

While neither species is especially scarce, the population of both is known to be decreasing. While the reasons for this are not well understood, the consistent and pervasive change of natural or semi-natural grassland into the green desert that is ryegrass must surely be having an impact.

We are fortunate to have so much in the way of wild upland around us. Not only does this provide a refuge for many birds pushed out of fertile lowland areas, it does the same for us when we feel the need to retreat a little.

It wasn't to the hills, but to lovely Lough Carra that I made my midweek retreat.

There has been a rigorous predator control programme in place on Carra, with the goal of restoring the once prolific breeding population of wildfowl, and especially mallard.

The Lough Carra Catchment Association website tells us that in the early 1970s as many as 2,500 mallard were wintering on the lake. By the year 2000 the population had fallen to an all-time record low of 53, with mink and hooded crows the prime suspects for that astonishing decline.

Over the last few weeks I have been watching a family of 10 ducks emerge from their daytime lodging to feed at dusk. Their preferred food is the insects which hatch in large numbers and rest awhile on reed stems before taking to the air.

The duck family are silent. We wouldn't know they are there at all until we see those dark shapes make their way across the bay in the gloaming. Unless the lake is still they are hard to see. With the advantage of a seat in a boat they are more visible.

They are entertaining too, as they move and feed among the reeds, sometimes reaching as high as their little beaks can reach to take caddis and chironomid.

I had only seen this one family, so was surprised to hear a soft and persistent peep-peep-peep-ing from a separate bed of bulrush. Sure enough, a second family emerged, this one with at least half a dozen ducklings.

As they went to join the first family in feeding, I could see their behaviour was very different, although in the fading light it was hard to identify them properly.

So, two kinds of duck breeding in the absence of mink.