Almost Extinct

When I started filming birds fifty one years ago the commonest moorland bird was the Twite or Mountain Linnet as it was locally called. You could walk the moors in July and come across half a dozen nests without really trying.The whole Pennine population must have been well over a thousand pairs.
Last week the RSPB announced that this year there may have been only a dozen breeding pairs in the whole of the Pennines. Its a sorry tale of overgrazing by sheep and cattle plus the loss of Hay meadows – the Twite feeds almost exclusively on seed. This weeks blog and gallery photos were taken a few days ago after constant baiting with Niger seed. Some of the birds in the flock of thirty would have come down from Scotland where they are still holding their own.www.facebook.com/gordon