The steep climb from the start of the Deerness Valley Way follows the route of an old rope-worked incline where, a century ago, a stationary engine on the hilltop hauled railway wagons up from Bankfoot coke works. Today it was hard work hauling ourselves up the hill, with every footstep sinking into thawing snow that was still knee-deep in places.
Ahead, a fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) landed in the hawthorns beside the path, but this landscape had nothing more to offer a berry eater; the haws had all been taken months ago. Most likely, the bird would make its way down towards the town, where, throughout the coldest days, this normally shy species has been delighting householders who still have some ornamental crab apples in their gardens. Starving fieldfares lose their inhibitions if apples are available.
The view always makes this hike worthwhile: to the south the distant hills of North Yorkshire; to the west the cleft in the North Pennines that is Weardale. Snow had reduced the hedges, plantations and farms below to graphite marks on white cartridge paper.
The only bright colours came from blossom on snow-laden gorse bushes beside the track and even brighter yellow birds under them. Yellowhammers, Emberiza citrinella, in sulphur-yellow breeding plumage, foraged under an evergreen gorse canopy that has provided shelter during the blizzards.
A sulphurous smell of coke once pervaded this hillside, which is now prime yellowhammer habitat, a broad corridor of tangled hawthorn, gorse, brambles and wild roses, uncultivated for centuries. In summer the birds have access to farmland on either side. Winter food comes from wildflower seeds, from last summer’s knapweed, yarrow and the withered blackberries that we could see poking through the snow.
In a week or two the cock birds will perch among the gorse flowers, singing their wheezy “little-bit-o’-bread-and-no-cheese” song that so often lacks the final syllable. The hen birds build their nests in the impenetrably spiny branches close to the ground. Some might give this unmanaged land the derogatory title “scrub”, but it provides these dazzling buntings with exactly what they need, even in the hardest months of the year.
