Bog Myrtle & Peat

Just worth including this picture, which is the first that I have ever taken of a whinchat on the Chayne. Two pairs live in an area of heather and willow scrub beside the farmhouse, and I’m used to see them everyday throughout the summer. When I first noticed them, I always thought that they were cock stonechats. It was only on closer inspection that I noticed the white stripe across the eye, rather than the chinstrap of the stonechat.

Whinchats are always cited as being the major casualties of bracken control programmes. The little birds like to lurk in bracken beds, but I have never seen any evidence that bracken control reduces their numbers. I have seen them move their territories and redistribute themselves in a small area which has been converted to heather, but I haven’t noticed anything like the dramatic wholseale desertion that some people have described following treatments with Asulox. Besides, while bracken is quite useful to whinchats, I have seen far more in open, scrubby heath land than I ever have in bracken.

Whinchats are said to be declining dramatically, but I find it hard to believe that modern bracken management techniques are responsible.