Birds are monitored at Wild Ingleborough as they are excellent indicators of landscape scale restoration. They have a broad range of nesting strategies, such as on the ground, in trees and within cavities, meaning a broad range of vegetation structures are required to support diverse communities. There is also a wide range of feeding habits, with some birds mainly eating seeds, some being insectivores and others feeding on small mammals and other birds. This means that bird communities can reflect the diversity and abundance of prey groups, such as invertebrates. 

At Ingleborough we have four Breeding Bird Surveys, carried out using the standard BTO methodology. Scar Close and South House Moor have been monitored by Natural England since 2004 and two new transects have been added in the last several years to cover Gauber and High Lot. Over all these surveys, 3956 individual birds have been recorded of 59 different species. The most common species is Meadow pipit but rarer birds such as Ring ouzel, Tree pipit and Short-eared owl have also been recorded.

One of the key measures of restoration success we will be monitoring over time is the total number of species or species richness of birds. The species richness over time of each of the four transects is plotted in Figure 1. 

The results show there has been a significant increase in species richness over time at Scar close, with approximately five more species recorded per survey now than in 2004. Increases in species such as Cuckoo, Song thrush and Jackdaw have helped drive this increase. 

However, as well as an increase in species richness we would also like to see a change in species composition, so there is a more even split of different species. One example of how this may happen is an increase in the abundance of woodland bird species as the number of trees in the landscape increases through planting and natural colonisation. 

We can already see this when comparing Scar Close, which has been under restoration for many decades and has extensive scrub, and Gauber which has only been under restoration since 2021 with planted trees that are still small. 

On Gauber, 68% of birds are either Meadow pipits or Skylarks, with 13% being woodland species (Figure 2). On the other hand, Scar Close has 40% woodland species, with greater numbers of species like Willow warbler, Chaffinch and Wren. It is hoped in coming years that Gauber sees an increase in woodland species and a more even bird community.