TO my mind – and eyes – more fascinating and rewarding than most nature programmes filmed in far away places, BBC TV’s marvellous Springwatch, the live-action look at our own wildlife, has now concluded its three week run.

One of the best of the series, I would say.

The presenting trio just about perfect – edging with humour their encyclopaedic insights, on everything from a tiny gall fly to otters and badgers.

And yet, aside from the heroics of Si, the stickleback, who captured all hearts with his dogged determination to hatch his eggs, the recurring theme seemed to be wildlife under threat. Especially birds.

The hen-harrier figured largely, and it is indeed a scandal that this magnificent bird of prey can be pushed, or rather persecuted, to the brink of extinction in England, where no nest has been successful this year, despite laws that should protect it and a strong focus on its plight.

I’ve seen a hen harrier in both the Dales (Arkengarthdale) and the North York Moors (Rosedale, Bransdale, Fryupdale, Commondale and Ugthorpe) and I find it disappointing that the national park authorities appear not to wish to draw attention to the threatened bird’s presence, even if that is only occasional, still less initiate any attempt to encourage breeding.

But Springwatch chiefly highlighted the decline in farmland birds. The benchmark seemed to be the 1970s, from which declines commonly of between 70 per cent and 90 per cent are recorded. But I would submit that if you go further back, the populations even of the 1970s would seem threadbare.

The writings of Richard Jefferies (1846 –1887) reveal a richness unimaginable today. Observations in his book Nature Near London (London mark you) perhaps make the point most forcefully. In a barley field “but ten miles from Charing Cross” he once came across “an incredible number of sparrows… they continually flew up, swept round and settled again, darkening the spot they chose”.

A birch copse was home to numerous nightingales. “Four or five may be heard singing at once.” Another sang in an orchard,“while City men hurry past to their train”.

Cuckoos were equally abundant. “One May morning I heard four calling close by. The instant one ceased another took it up - a perfect madrigal.”

Springwatch identified the special concern over ground-nesting birds – hard-pressed through early grass cutting. Jefferies once saw “about 400” lapwings settling into a field. Their numbers increased until “there were certainly fully 2,000”.

Blackbirds today remain plentiful, but chiefly in gardens. Jefferies reports: “There is not an oak here in June without a blackbird.” Thrushes, warblers and tits were also common. In wheat, stubble finches were “more numerous than the berries on the hedge”. There, too, “the linnets come in parties, the happy yellowhammer, buntings, chaffinches, everyone finds something to his liking”.

Interestingly, Jefferies notes that: “The more the land is cultivated, the more food there is for the birds.” Today the opposite is true, with efficiency claiming every grain.

Insects and flowers also helped sustain Jefferies’ birds. By a thick hedge he counted 60 species of wildflower and noted “beetles of every kind”. In the adjoining field, mice were so abundant they could “often be heard rushing along the furrows”. This would have been heaven for the barn owl on Springwatch that struggled to feed its young.