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| Courtesy of Andrew Hay |
The twite is a small, upland
finch that visits the Peak District in the summer in order to breed.
It overwinters on the saltmarshes and estuaries of south and east England.
Twite like to nest on the moorlands
in tall, bushy vegetation such as heather or bracken. But they like
to feed exclusively on seeds from hay meadows and pastures, generally
within 2 km of the moorland edge. An ideal site would be like this
where hay meadows creep up the hillside towards the moorlands above.
Consequently, as numbers of
hay meadows have declined, so too have twite numbers. It is estimated
that in the last 10 years there has been a 50% decline from the South
Pennines, its only English breeding grounds. There are now only
about 200 pairs remaining in the Peak District, which is about a quarter
of the total English population.
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Click here
for more information (292kb PDF) on how organisations are working
together through the Peak
District Biodiversity Action Plan to look after the twite. |
