Where Have the Birds Gone?
I was on Newmarket Heath yesterday, with a racehorse trainer, who like me is a countryman.
Newmarket Heath has not changed much environmentally in centuries. The link gives a history on the racecourse website. The grass is mown fairly short and it is not fertilised with anything artificial. The wildflowers are of a bigger variety than normal and there are hares (big bunnies) in abundance. It’s importance as a wild life area is recognised in that it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest.
We wondered, if when everything is so constant, have a lot of the birds and especially the songbirds disappeared in recent years.
As someone, who has been on the Heath for over twenty years and knows it well, the trainer put it down to one thing – sparrowhawks.
Now the site of birds of prey is wonderful. But so is the site of all the smaller birds that sing and give us so much pleasure! It’s a tricky dilemma, but then if they’ve gone on Newmarket Heath, where conditions haven’t changed in centuries, it can’t be down to bad farming practices in that instance.
In my garden, I used to have lots of yellow hammers, swallows and pied wagtails. They have become a lot less common in recent years.
The Anonymous Widower 
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