Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 9th June 2024
A shadowy feature about the magic of the Outdoor City's crepuscular hours.
Morning. An evening post today, in particular the summer creatures of our twilight. And a brief heads up for a few upcoming events and noteworthy happenings.
This month sees the city’s DocFest and Migration Matters festivals, where there’s plenty for It’s Looking A Bit Black Over Bill’s Mother’s readers to see. Check our June listings service post for a couple of dozen highlights we’ve picked out.
It’s also Move More Month, where the city’s movement movers and shakers will be promoting events to get us all out and about under our own steam. Meanwhile, the Sheffield BetterPoints programme now has close to 11,000 users, claiming free coffees at a growing bunch of local cafes by cashing in the rewards they get for walking, cycling, wheeling, running and using public transport.
Organisers tell me the anonymous data generated from BetterPoints has already been analysed by a partnership of Sheffield University and Living Streets SW Sheffield to identify places where road safety could be improved near schools and student routes.
And another reminder that anyone wanting to trial an e-bike can head to A Different Gear for their community e-bike day on 22nd June, with e-bike tryouts from the Velo de Ville range of e-bikes and e-cargo bikes.
I am still striving to get the council and city region to talk to me about our local Nature Recovery Plan, which will go to consultation soon. In the meantime, maybe note the local Restore Nature Now walk with the South Yorkshire Climate Alliance on June 22nd.
If you’ve been trying us out for a few weeks, we’d love it if you could help make It’s Looking A Bit Black Over Bill’s Mother’s bigger and better (and help pay our bills too) by chipping in a pocket money sum - it’s just £3.67 a month if you go annual?
The Twilight Zone
Twilight in June has its draws and its drawbacks. Head out onto our upland fringes as night falls and you’ll have a good chance of meeting exotic and unworldly creatures unimagined by many city dwellers a few miles away settling down for the evening. But you may also get eaten alive by midges.
I’m at the edge of the topmost Redmires reservoir with three dozen fellow explorers, a few of whom have their faces hidden by brimmed hats and black anti insect nets.
On the way up here with Sheffield Bird Study Group (SBSG) evening walk leader Richard Hill, we stopped by a grassy field to watch nine Curlews stocking up on food for the night.
It was quite a shock to see so many: Curlews are a rarity in many parts of the country, but for various reasons they appear to be doing well around here. Once a farmland bird, intensive farming and insecticides have made life difficult in its traditional territory, so Curlews head upwards where they find food and shelter on moors and upland fields.
Our moorlands and moorland fringes can be a haven for otherwise rare wildlife, if we look after it the right way. And that means us as much as the landowners, as we’ll see.
None of those nine Curlews will have nested in that Lodge Moor field, says David Wood, because the farmer has mown it so early in the season, shredding any nests and young Curlews who might have chosen to try and raise a family there.
We’re heading up to Stanage Pole for the annual and very popular SBSG Crepuscular Field Trip. Crespuscular means of the twilight, in particular the animals and beings that are seen at dusk and dawn, the creepy term term carrying with it a greyish sense of mysteries just out of eyeshot, of witches, mists, and strange noises from the shadows. And tonight, hopefully, owls, Woodcock and Nightjars.
(Listen to the weird call of the Woodcock here, for example. And the buzzing churr of the Nightjar is here.)
Richard tells me there are often between 10 and 20 Nightjars starting families across the Hallam Moors most summers and tonight we’re hoping to hear, and maybe see, at least one of them. But nothing’s guaranteed in birdwatching, except perhaps for the midges on warm summer nights.
Nightjars have made a comeback around Sheffield, says Richard. A few years ago, they were mainly confined to Wharncliffe, but forest clearances, where plantation trees have been clear- felled, suit them very well.
So they have moved into the former plantations around Redmires in particular, with a few at Burbage too. There are hopes they may like the new open areas at Wyming Brook and Rough Standhills, where several tall trees have been left to decay and provide viewpoints for the birds.
Fences around the cleared areas really help, I’m told, because they keep the dogs out. Ground nesting birds, like Nightjars, Curlews, Skylarks and many others, can be disturbed so much by inquisitive dogs that they fail to raise their young. Dogs flush out the adults, while the young get hungry or cold, or snaffled up by wily crows who have learned to watch out for humans (and their dogs) handing them a meal ticket.
In June, on warm still evenings, you have a good chance of hearing the unearthly churring of Nightjars at Redmires, and maybe even seeing one. Birders on last week’s evening walk tell me how they once had two or three of the mysterious birds swooping along the path in front of them.
Tonight, however, we’re met by a less impressive small flock of Greylag Geese by the roadside. These are really feral birds, says Richard, rare in the 1960s but after escaping from collections, they’re now everywhere, he says.
We head up towards Stanage Pole as the grey night descends. A Sparrowhawk and then two Kestrels head over, and we hear Wrens singing from the bushes.
Richard explains how Nightjars usually take a couple of years to arrive in a clear felled former plantation, and then maybe stay for ten years or so until new trees grow too high for them to successfully breed and nest (on the ground) and catch the moths and insects on which they depend.
The birds also live on heathland, if there are few trees and lots of insects. Long before humans arrived to chop down forests for them, it seems the birds may have followed huge herbivores like elephants and rhinos who’d clear areas of woodland as they wandered around Europe.
Like Swifts, Nightjars are very old birds on the evolutionary scale, and have been soaring around our crepuscular skies for a very very long time.
We climb high above the reservoirs, and then everyone stops and scans the southern moors, turned white by Cotton Grass. There are gasps as we pick out a spectacular Short Eared Owl swooping and hovering over the heather and Cotton Grass a few hundred yards away.
At this time of year they’re busy looking for voles for their young, and you can often see them if you head upwards at twilight. Three Curlews head out above us onto the darkening moors. Where are they going at this time of night, I ask longstanding SBSG member and photographer David Wood. He shrugs his shoulders.
“Don’t know,” he says. There are many questions still to be answered about the birds and beasts on our doorstep, he says, which makes the whole thing that much more interesting.
The drizzle, and then rain closes in, along with a feeling that any sensible Nightjar might choose to sit it out for now until the rain clears and the moths reappear.
Richard Hill tells me it is still a bit early in the season: Nightjars are migrants and haven’t been in Sheffield that long as yet this year. Recent tagging of the birds show they can migrate here for over 5,000 miles, from south of the equator in Africa.
The Crepuscular Field Trip usually takes place in mid June, we’re up here early this year to avoid the Euros, it seems.
Heading back down in the cold rain we shelter under a tree and wait patiently. A couple of astute birders are already there: it seems a Nightjar and Woodcock have already passed them by, flushed down the hill by the crowds of birdwatchers.
It goes very quiet, and the tension mounts as the night falls around us. Everyone is poised with their binoculars, as the rain patters down.
And then: “Woodcock! Going right!” someone calls, and we spot a single large-winged bird, a bit like a huge moth, says David Wood, fluttering over.
This is called roding, he says, where the birds navigate a circumference of their woodland to mark their territory out to rivals. If you’re lucky, you hear them call, he adds. “It’s like a cross between a submarine sonar and a frog.”
We wait, and shiver, and eventually button up our coats and head back down to the reservoir. The Nightjars, and the midges, will have to wait for another night.
Selected What’s On Out There (from Sun 9th June)
See our full listings service here. And please share with your outdoorsy mates too. I try and update the bustling What’s Out There post every few days so you can always find good stuff to get up to. If you appreciate all my work on this, please subscribe!
Sun 9th - Edale Fell Race (£5)
Mon 10th - Fri 14th - Daily health walks in parks and green spaces from Step Out Sheffield, 10 am start
Tues 11th - Sheffield Ramblers Walk - Shire Brook and Rother Valleys (6m - Meet Sheffield Interchange)
12th-17th - Sheffield Documentary Film Festival - Some highlights Bill’s mother might like:
Nocturnes - Hawk Moths of the Eastern Himalaya
Plastic People - Worldwide microplastics
Yintah - The Wet’suwet’en nation take on Canada
Thurs 13th - Friends of Porter Valley work morning
Thurs 13th - Graves Park Digging Deeper For All - Backyard Safari Walk (booking required)
Thurs 13th - Green City Action Grimesthorpe community allotment volunteer days
14th - 22nd June - Migration Matters Festival - some selections Bill’s mother might enjoy (some free & some paid):
Travels with Harcourt - Sound maps of Harcourt Road in Crookesmoor and Hong Kong
Gathering - Woman of Colour on nature
Manasamitra & Hamsaz Ensemble - ‘Echoes of Earth’ and ‘Meltwater’ music
Walking From The Palm Of Your Hand - walking & landscape
Sat 15th - Sheffield Urban Caving Tours - Megatron & Sheaf Culverts - Tickets for July go on sale today…
Thanks for reading. Please share with your mates if you’ve enjoyed this post, and remember an annual subscription costs less than an official baseball hat from the Trump store.
What a lovely, atmospheric read - thank you David!