{"id":584906,"date":"2026-05-15T05:15:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/584906\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T05:15:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T05:15:12","slug":"country-diary-this-weary-traveller-has-escaped-the-hunters-gun-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/584906\/","title":{"rendered":"Country diary: This weary traveller has escaped the hunter\u2019s gun | Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The morning air is moist and utterly still. Above the flood bank, dappled grey cirrocumulus parts to a clear blue. Birds<\/a> sound from every side: the cuckoo\u2019s insistent call over a chorus of warblers \u2013 the sedge warbler\u2019s machine-gun rattle, the willow warbler\u2019s falling cadence, and, piercing them all, the explosive eruptions of a Cetti\u2019s\u00a0warbler buried deep in cover.<\/p>\n

But it is the turtle dove that I have come to hear: that low, tender purring<\/a>, almost lost in the greater chorus. When it comes, my heart lifts. I find a lone bird on a telegraph\u00a0wire, one of its favoured\u00a0perches. Through the binoculars, I make out a pink-grey breast, a neat black-and-white collar, and rust\u2011red feathers on the\u00a0back, each one finely marked\u00a0with black.<\/p>\n

A sedge warbler singing. Photograph: Sarah Lambert<\/p>\n

It looks a little travel-worn, as well it might after a 3,000-mile flight from its wintering grounds in west Africa. A fortnight ago, I watched 30 turtle doves in Crete, strung along another set of wires, resting before the last stretch of their treacherous journey across mainland Europe.<\/p>\n

This bird has escaped the hunter\u2019s gun and made it to the Maxey Cut, a flood-relief channel completed 70 years ago to protect fen-edge towns such as West Deeping and Deeping St James from flooding. The cut runs through land that has been reshaped by quarrying for gravel, and whose restoration has created a landscape of flowery grassland, willow, reedbeds and open water \u2013\u00a0all a haven for wildlife.<\/p>\n

That matters, because the turtle\u00a0dove is critically endangered<\/a> in the UK, its population having fallen by about 99%<\/a> since the 1960s. Yet this patchwork of habitats still offers what it needs to breed, and a supplementary feeding scheme, supported by Operation Turtle Dove<\/a> and administered locally by the Langdyke Countryside Trust<\/a>, is helping to improve breeding\u00a0success.<\/p>\n

\u2018Anyone walking the Maxey Cut may encounter the distinctive wildlife of this fen-edge place.\u2019 Photograph: Sarah Lambert<\/p>\n

Sensitive management of the river by the Environment Agency,\u00a0creating pools, riffles and meanders, and removing obstacles to fish movement, has also helped other threatened species, including\u00a0sea trout and common eel. Earlier this month a\u00a0new interpretive trail<\/a> opened here, so\u00a0that anyone walking the Maxey\u00a0Cut may encounter the distinctive wildlife of this fen-edge place \u2013 and, with luck, hear again that soft,\u00a0improbable purr.<\/p>\n

Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian\u2019s Country Diary, 2018-2024, is available now at guardianbookshop.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The morning air is moist and utterly still. Above the flood bank, dappled grey cirrocumulus parts to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-584906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}