大象传媒

Ring ouzels are birds of wild upland country, migrant thrushes rather like blackbirds with a bold white bib .In fact, ouzel, is an old word for blackbird or thrush.

Unlike blackbirds, these are shy creatures which winter in North Africa and breed in remote craggy places in Wales, the north of England and Scotland, but are nowhere common. In southern England their decline has been sharp, with just a handful of pairs remaining on Dartmoor.

For The Living World, Miranda Krestovnikoff tracks down these elusive birds with the help of naturalist Nick Baker who's been studying the Dartmoor ouzels for the RSPB in an attempt to find out why the birds are in decline.

By late June, some birds have already fledged, but near other nests, the male birds are still singing and both parents are visiting the young. Although singing birds are easy to locate, proving that birds have bred at any particular site is a different matter as Nick admits, and this season has already provided him with some surprises.

Miranda learns that while the birds are declining across the whole of the UK, ornithologists are still uncertain about the reasons. Climate change may be drying up their mountain grasslands, or disturbance and nest predation may be the reasons, but the mysteries surrounding this stunning bird remain to challenge the dedicated teams striving to save it.