Why the summer moor asks more of us

Summer is the season most of us head for the high ground. The heather is coming into flower, the days are long, and the views stretch for miles. It is also the season when the moors are at their most fragile. Between roughly April and the end of July, areas of heather, cotton grass, bilberry and rough tussocky pasture turn into a nursery, and almost everything nesting out there does it on the ground.

These birds do not build a nest in a bush or a hollow tree. They scrape a shallow hollow in the vegetation or the peat, line it lightly, and hope camouflage does the rest. Eggs are mottled and cryptic; chicks are mobile within hours of hatching and rely on stillness and pattern to survive. It is a strategy that works beautifully against crows and foxes and rather less well against a walker taking a shortcut, or a dog quartering the heather for the sheer joy of it.

What is actually under your boots

The list of ground-nesting moorland birds is longer than most people expect. Curlew, lapwing, golden plover, dunlin, redshank, snipe, skylark, meadow pipit, twite, ring ouzel, red grouse, merlin and short-eared owl all raise young on or near the ground in upland Britain. Several of them are in serious decline, which is why a bit of care from walkers genuinely matters.

• Curlew incubate for around 27 to 29 days, and the chicks take roughly five weeks to fledge. That is a long window of vulnerability.
• Lapwing, golden plover and dunlin often nest in loose colonies on flatter, open ground, so a single walk across the wrong patch can pass close to several nests at once.
• Red grouse, skylark and meadow pipit nest in heather and tussock grass, sometimes within a metre or two of a well-used path.
• Merlin and short-eared owl nest on the ground too, and will desert a site if they are disturbed repeatedly.

All wild birds, their nests and their eggs are protected by law while the nest is in use. Disturbing a Schedule 1 species at the nest is a criminal offence, and ignorance is not a defence. You are unlikely to be prosecuted for walking past a nest, but the birds still pay the price.

Keep the dog close, and mean it

If you take one thing from this article, take this: between spring and late summer, a dog on a moor should be on a lead or at heel. Not "under close control somewhere ahead of you", but close enough that you can stop it with your voice and your hand.

The problem is not that your dog wants to eat chicks. It is that a dog moving through tussocky grass flushes sitting birds, and a flushed bird leaves eggs and chicks exposed to cold, rain and predators. Ground predators follow scent, and a dog leaves a trail of it through exactly the places a curlew hoped nobody would visit.

• Use a fixed lead of around two metres on open moorland, or keep the dog at heel if it is genuinely reliable.
• Do not throw balls or sticks into heather, rushes or long grass during the nesting season.
• If your dog needs to run, choose lowland woods, farmland paths or a beach instead, and save the open moor for the autumn and winter.
• In Scotland, the outdoor access code asks for a short lead around livestock and during the nesting season; in England and Wales, common sense and the Countryside Code point the same way.

Learning to read the alarm

Moorland birds are not shy about telling you that you have got too close. A curlew will give a bubbling, rising alarm call and often circle overhead. Lapwings will dive and mob. Some species will run along the ground trailing a wing, pretending to be injured, to draw you away from a chick. Oystercatchers and redshank will pipe at you from a distance.

When that happens, stop. Do not keep going to see what you have found, and do not stand still to take photographs. Look at your feet and the ground immediately around you, turn round, and retreat the way you came. If you need to continue in the same direction, take a wide detour, giving the bird at least fifty metres of space. Never walk between a calling adult and the place it is trying to draw you away from.

If a bird bursts out from under your boot, you are almost certainly standing in or beside a nest. Stop, step back carefully, and leave by the shortest route that takes you away. Do not crouch down to search for eggs, and do not touch any chick you find. A chick on its own is not abandoned; the parent is usually nearby, waiting for you to leave.

Stick to the path and respect temporary signs

Moorland paths exist for a reason, and staying on them keeps your feet off the places where nests are most likely. Resist the temptation to cut a corner, take a direct line across heather, or follow a faint trod that heads off across open ground. Edge-of-path vegetation is exactly where skylarks and pipits nest.

Much upland ground is open access land, but that right comes with responsibilities. You may see temporary notices asking walkers to avoid a particular area, or signs asking for dogs to be kept on a lead. These are usually put up by the land manager for nesting or livestock reasons, and they are worth heeding even when they are not legally binding.

• Follow waymarked routes where they exist, and keep to the main trod rather than fanning out.
• Do not linger, picnic or sit down in the middle of heather or tussocky grass in summer.
• Leave gates as you find them and take all litter home, including fruit peel and crumbs.
• Light no fires and use no disposable barbecues. Dry heather burns fast and the damage lasts for years.

A few more habits for a summer on the moor

Respecting birds sits alongside the rest of your moorland kit and habits. Carry more water than you think you need, because shade is scarce and the wind can hide how hot you are getting. Check yourself and the dog for ticks after every walk, and be aware that moorland sheep and cattle are often grazing nearby.

Walk quietly, keep groups small, and give other people and their animals plenty of room. Do all of that and you will see more, not less: birds that are not stressed stay put, and a curlew that has not been flushed will often show itself beautifully.