Moorland and Heathland Wildlife
The wildlife associated with moorland habitats is unusual and sometimes extremely rare.
BIRDS: Britain’s moorland has a high proportion of the world's curlews, twites, dunlins and red grouse. Curlew are now extremely rare on Exmoor but it is a stronghold for whinchats and stonechats. Other birds you may see include the soaring sky-lark with its trembling, high-pitched song, meadow pipits, wheatear, Dartford warbler, snipe, kestrels and buzzards. Dartford warbler were first recorded on Exmoor in 1995. There are now over 120 breeding pairs, largely due to milder winters and increasing scrub. Occasionally if you are very lucky the ultimate moorland specialists short-eared owls and hen harriers can be seen hunting low over the moors in daylight hours.
INSECTS: Moorlands and heaths are important habitats for all invertebrate species. Exmoor's heaths are the national stronghold for the Heath Fritillary, one of our rarest breeding butterflies. Exmoor has well over a thousand species of moths and many, such as the emperor, oak eggar and beautiful yellow underwing, rely on heath plants as food for their caterpillars. One, the scarce blackneck, is local to this part of Britain and others are elsewhere only found much further afield. More surveys need to be carried out to find out the extent of Exmoor’s invertebrate fauna, heathland on the North York Moors for example has been found to contain over 15% of all British ground beetle species and over 20% of its spider species.
REPTILLES: Lizards are common on moorlands and heaths but hard to spot as they scurry away very quickly. Look out for Adders basking in the sun, these are wetland species which feed on the abundant supply of frogs but they like a dry place to snooze.
PLANTS: Interesting moorland plants you may spot in addition to the cotton grasses, heathers and bog mosses include the smaller western gorse. Whortleberry is common but look out for the related plants cranberry and crowberry. Other small but very beautiful moorland plants include the ivy-leaved bellflower, bog asphodel, and milkwort. In the acid wet conditions of rain fed (ombrotrophic peat) there are few nutrients so the round-leaved sundew has adapted to survive by trapping insects on their sticky leaves and dissolving the nutrients.
Finally the Exmoor pony, though not strictly wild, roams the moors and the sharp-eyed may see red deer, the largest of the wild mammals found on Exmoor.