The Peak District’s moorland makes it an ideal home for many birds which need large, undisturbed areas to feed and breed, such as the golden plover and birds of prey including merlins, short-eared owl, goshawks and peregrine falcons.

In August 2006, a pair of hen harriers set up home on National Trust moorlands in the Peak District and laid a clutch of eggs. The nest became the focus of a round-the-clock conservation effort to protect it, in the hope that the birds would become only the second pair of harriers to have raised young in the Peak District in the last 130 years.

Only a few months before, the RSPB published a report, Peak Malpractice, which contained evidence showing that the numbers of birds of prey in the Dark Peak had fallen in the 1990s; goshawks no longer breed in the District’s north-east moors. The decline of hay farming in the region is also threatening the numbers of the twite, which relies on it for its survival. Despite this bad news, the snipe, curlew, lapwing, skylark, meadow pipit (the Peak District’s most common bird), whinchat and ring ouzel still thrive in the Peaks.

The secluded woods and moors of the Longshaw Estate are a haven for pied flycatchers, crossbills and green woodpeckers, and are also inhabited by the charmingly-named northern hairy wood ant, the largest species of British ants. Invertebrates found in the Dovedale Valley include the glow worm (which is actually a beetle) and the northern brown argus butterfly.

Plants and flowers

The plant life is as varied as it bird life, thanks to its limestone dales and their mixture of open grassland and woodland. Beneath the ash and hazel trees grow rare medicinal plants, such as mezereon, Yellow Star of Bethlehem and Herb Paris - their presence is a sign that the woodland is centuries old.

The moorlands of the High Peak are home to cloudberry, a plant related to the blackberry, though its fruits are bright orange, not dark purple, and are a source of food of grouse, the popular target of game hunters. Heather, bracken, cotton grass, crowberry and bilberry are also common on the moors.

Wild flowers which proliferate on the district’s grasslands include bloody cranesbill, burnt tip orchid, globe flower, horseshoe vetch, jacob’s ladder and stemless thistle. Mountain pansy and spring sandwort (also known as leadwort) grow well on the diet of minerals provided by land around the old lead mines.