It's........ deja vu......all over again

Excellent post Cliff......it got me thinking about the time when we had regular (max 6?) SEOs hunting over Wath Ings and how things have changed since then.

For a start we now have trees. Looking around the old Wath area it's hard to imagine that there were no trees - or very few trees. You had to walk up to Cat Hill to see woodland birds. In those days a single Jay was a noteworthy record.

I might be wrong here but the reduction of SEOs in this area seems to have coincided with increases in Tawny Owls and LEOs which have followed the increase in woodland cover. There's now up to 3 pairs of LEOs just at the Adwick end of the valley. I wonder if there is direct competition between these owl species; the Tawnys and LEOs pushing the SEOs out of the old Wath area.