Country Diary: The Stang

We sat on the soft, mossy carpet on the precipice of Hope Scar, sun on our backs, wind in our faces, with the Stang forest's regimented ranks of spruces below. Beyond lay fields and white-painted farmhouses and, in the hazy distance, hills that divide Teesdale from Weardale. The Stang would be just another conifer plantation but for this stunning view. Approached along sombre canyons of deep green foliage, the vista suddenly opens out at the cliff edge. Here it seems as though the sunlit world lies literally at your feet, unfolding to the horizon which, on a clear day, is all of 20 miles away. This elevated viewpoint often delivers ornithological surprises.

Once we sat here and looked down on a short-eared owl and watched it drop on to voles. On another occasion we briefly found ourselves eye to eye with a buzzard that drifted along the cliff edge. Today we had a close encounter with crossbills. The cone-laden crowns of some of the sitka spruces, which were seedlings when we first visited this spot 30 years ago, have now reached the top of the cliff. As we watched, a pair of crossbills arrived to feed on cones of the nearest tree, just 10 metres away but separated by a 25-metre vertical drop. The male, in fine red plumage, sat preening, while his green consort set about the cones, scissoring out seeds with her peculiar crossed mandibles. Spruce forests like the Stang may not be everyone's favourite landscape feature, but they provide an almost limitless supply of food for these parrot-like finches, shedding vast quantities of seeds from mid-winter onwards. With food so readily available, the crossbills begin breeding here in February, and it was a safe bet that, somewhere in the forest canopy below, this pair's brood would have already fledged and flown the nest.