The fells can feel like the emptiest landscape in Britain. Wind, grass, a bit of rock, and then a small brown bird flits off a tussock, flies twenty metres and drops again. Upland birdwatching is not like a reserve hide: the birds are scattered, often distant, and you will hear far more than you see. That is exactly what makes it rewarding. Learn a handful of species and the moor starts to feel populated, with skylarks singing above your boots and ravens tumbling over the crags.

When and how to look

Timing does most of the work for you. Between April and early July, birds are singing, displaying and feeding young, and the uplands are at their most alive. Early morning is best: the wind is lighter, the air is clearer and song carries. On hot afternoons, most birds go quiet.

Walk into the wind where you can, so your scent and noise travel ahead of you rather than behind. Stop often. A five-minute stand-still beside a wall will often produce more than an hour of steady striding. Take binoculars — 8x42 is the classic choice — and try to listen with your hands cupped behind your ears when the wind is up; it genuinely makes a difference.

The small birds of grass and moss

The meadow pipit is the default bird of the British uplands. Streaky brown, pale-legged, with a habit of walking rather than hopping, it flushes ahead of you with a thin, insistent seep-seep. In spring it performs a parachute song flight, rising and then descending on fluttering wings with a jangling song. If a small bird on the fell is not obviously anything else, it is probably a meadow pipit.

The skylark needs no introduction but is easy to miss once it is high. Look for a small bird rising vertically, singing continuously for minutes on end, then parachuting down. On the ground it looks heavier and crestier than a pipit, with a long hind claw. Listen too for its soft flight call, a dry prrit, given as it flushes.

The wheatear is the dandy of the fells: grey back, black mask, white rump, and a bold black T across the tail as it flies away. It arrives from Africa in March and perches upright on stones, walls and bare patches, flicking its tail and clacking chack-chack. The stonechat is a year-round bird of bracken and scrubby edges, black-headed and rusty-breasted, whose call is exactly what it says — two pebbles knocked together.

Big shapes overhead

Once you look up, the uplands open out.

• Raven — the fell flyer. Bigger and longer-winged than a crow, with a distinctive wedge-shaped tail and a deep, resonant kronk. In spring, pairs roll and tumble in display, sometimes flying upside down.
• Carrion crow — flatter wings, squared tail, a harsher, higher caw. Usually lower and more direct in flight than a raven.
• Buzzard — broad, rounded wings and a mewing peee-ya. The commonest large raptor over most of our hills.
• Kestrel — the hovering one, head into the wind, tail fanned, dropping suddenly onto prey in the grass.
• Peregrine — scarce but present on big crags. Fast, dark-backed, with stiff, powerful wingbeats and a stoop that ends a walk's conversation mid-sentence.

Waders and moorland specialists

Upland waders are the sound of the hills in spring. The curlew's bubbling, haunting call carries for a mile, and the bird itself is unmistakable with its long, down-curved bill. Golden plover show as silvery-gold spangled birds on the high tops, giving a plaintive single whistle that is easy to mistake for a distant human. Dunlin breed on a few high plateaus and give a rasping, rolling call as they display.

The red grouse is the moorland classic: dark red-brown, whirring up explosively at close range with a go-back, go-back, go-back. Watch it glide, then drop back into the heather.

Two stream birds deserve a mention. The dipper is a plump, dark bird with a bright white bib that bobs on rocks mid-river and flies fast and low along the water. The grey wagtail, despite the name, has a vivid yellow undercarriage and a bounding flight, and it often shares the same stretches of upland beck.

Identifying by sound and behaviour

You cannot chase every bird on the fells. Instead, learn five calls well — meadow pipit, skylark, curlew, raven, red grouse — and the hills become readable. Pay attention to behaviour too. A bird carrying food is heading to a nest. A pair dive-bombing or calling in alarm is telling you that you are too close. A pipit fluttering along the ground away from you may be drawing you off a nest. All of these are more reliable than plumage at fifty metres in a crosswind.

Watching responsibly

The uplands in spring are a nursery, and most of it is on the ground. Follow the Countryside Code and any local access restrictions, and take these simple habits seriously.

• Keep to paths and tracks between March and July, when nests and chicks sit in grass, heather and moss.
• Keep dogs on a lead or firmly under control on open access land and near livestock — uncontrolled dogs do real damage to ground-nesting birds.
• Move on quietly if birds alarm-call, mob or distract; do not linger to watch a nest.
• Never use recorded song playback in the breeding season, and avoid playing calls near crags or gullies.
• Give crag and gully nest sites a wide berth, and avoid sharing precise locations of sensitive species.
• Watch from a seated, still position rather than stalking a bird to close range — patience always gets you better views anyway.

Do all that, and the fells repay you: a curlew calling over the mist, a ring ouzel clacking from a crag, a raven rolling in a spring thermal above the ridge. Pack binoculars, walk into the wind, and let the birds come to you.