WILDLIFE experts say an array of birds which visited a Derby nature reserve this spring – including the first sighting of a common redstart – show why a failed plan to build on part of it shouldn't have gone ahead.
Derby City Council had planned to create a cycle track and mountain bike skills area on part of the Sanctuary nature reserve on Pride Park.
Once the city's planning committee had narrowly given the track permission, work began immediately.
But Derbyshire Wildlife Trust successfully applied for an injunction to stop it and was on track in an application to get a judicial review of the planning decision.
Then, any hearing became unnecessary, after the council pulled the plug on the scheme in March.
The authority said this was because, while the injunction halted progress, work required before the bird nesting season could no longer take place.
It said the affordability of the project depended on using contractors already on site and this would "increase costs beyond the budget available".
Councillor Martin Repton, then cabinet member for leisure and culture, said the council "genuinely believed" the cycle track wouldn't have affected the wildlife.
Nick Brown, the trust's enquiries officer, said that, had track work continued, some of the birds who came to The Sanctuary to nest might not have come back.
He said: "They [the nesting places] are sites adjacent to where they would have been working. Many of the birds could have been disturbed by the noise and movement."
Mr Brown said that, during spring, the reserve attracted birds moving north.
He said: "These stop off to feed and rest and, especially if the weather is poor, may stay a few days before moving on.
"The open habitat attracts wheatears each spring. Some of these birds were almost certainly bound for Greenland judging by their lateness, size and colour.
"A ring ouzel was seen on April 4. This is only the third sighting on the reserve. These are moorland and mountain birds so this one might have been heading for north Derbyshire or to Scotland or could have been a continental bird heading for Scandinavia.
"A yellow wagtail was seen also and a common redstart too – the latter a first for the reserve."
He said other birds seen included blackcaps, willow warblers, whitethroat, and sand martins.
Mr Brown added: "Of returning breeding birds, skylarks were heard singing and probably bred, lapwings were regular for a month and may have tried to nest."
Meanwhile, a second peregrine chick has flown the nest at Derby Cathedral, leaving just one remaining.
This is the ninth year in succession that the same pair of falcons has nested on the 16th-century tower of the cathedral, using a nest platform erected in 2006.
