A good number of dippers were spotted throughout the system, but in many cases actual nest sites have proved elusive.  This is largely down to there being quite small windows when they are actually nest building, (nobody confirmed nest building at all - it possibly took place before our surveyors got out and about), and again when they are back and forth feeding young in the nest. 

Outside of these periods, the birds are there to be seen but are rarely giving away the location of their nests.  Thankfully quite a few fledglings were seen at the regular places, Morrisons, Damems, Oakworth, Haworth and Oxenhope, even if the actual sites weren’t always clear.  
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​We hope that when the Worth Valley Railway finish replacing their bridge at Haworth that the resident pair will move back in there.  On North Beck, there was much activity around Castle Mill, and confirmed breeding at Goose Eye.  Holme House Wood drew a blank again, we have to guess that is due to a lack of the preferred old stone walls/bridges for nest sites?
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​We didn’t have coverage on some of the upper streams, but a confirmed successful nest right up by Leeshaw reservoir, and similar by Ponden reservoir in recent years, suggest that we really ought to be paying more attention higher up.  It was confirmed that they have been up as far as the small stream through Newsholme in the past, but they didn’t show this year.  We had nobody covering Sladen Beck, nor the top end of North Beck (Slippery Stones and above), so if anyone is out walking these areas at other times of the year and see dippers it would be good just to hear from you.  Dippers are also reported as occasionally feeding round the edges of lakes.  We’ve had no reports of any of ours feeding around the reservoirs, so again it would be good to hear from anyone who sees this.  The Leeshaw pair were only seen feeding in the stream below the reservoir. 
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​Dippers reportedly maintain their territories throughout the year, but can travel up and down a mile or more to feed, so although we see them about throughout the year we can never be sure where their home nest is.
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We would like to thank all the surveyors who helped with this project. If you would like to help with next years survey or have sightings to report please contact us.
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It is said that water is the source of life, however, very few people fully understand the diversity of life that exists under the surface of the River Worth. Some may have leaned over a bridge and seen a brown trout and others may have spent a happy summer day catching bullheads in jars paddling in the river. There is however a whole web of other life hiding in the river. The volunteers of the River Worth Friends and Aire Rivers Trust survey year-round to assess the health of the rivers hidden wildlife.
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​​Supporting these fish in the food chain, is a whole host of river bugs that call the riverbed home. Every one occupies its own special place in the river habitat and can tell us much about the river's problems. Indeed these river bugs have been compared to the coal miners canary. In historic mining, a canary would be taken down a mine to provide an early warning system for polluted air in a mine, as they succumb to the bad air long before the miners would pass out and die of suffocation.  In the same way, the loss of small insects in the river can warn us there are pollution problems.
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​ We have a network of volunteers working in pairs along the river to sample fixed sites, once a month between March and October. These riverfly volunteers look for eight groups of bugs in the river to assess pollution levels:

​​To gather a sample of these bugs, monitors undertake four minutes of collection, where they kick gravel and turn stones on the riverbed. This releases insects into a net, so they can then be sorted and counted in a large tray. The results are then logged on the National Riverfly Partnership Database for review by Aire Rivers Trust and the Environment Agency to help build a picture of the ongoing health of our rivers.
 
Where the results show problems volunteers are able to re-take the sample to check the results and report problems to the Environment Agency for further investigation. Essentially making our riverfly monitoring volunteers the local eyes and ears of the Environment Agency for emerging pollution problems. 

During the Summer of 2024 River Worth Friends in partnership with Aire Rivers Trust and Keighley Big Local are running a number of taster sessions along the River Worth and North Beck for members of the public to experience riverfly monitoring, with the aim of expanding our local network of trained river monitors along the Worth Valley.
 
We have dates planned through Keighley on Thursday evenings 7-9pm on the following dates:
 
June 20th – North Dean Allotments
June 27th – The Walk
July 4th – Damems Nature Reserve
July 11th – Aireworth Grove

We are also running a qualification day on Saturday 13th July at Hainsworth Wood Community Centre, for volunteers who have completed 2 taster sessions, to achieve their National Riverfly Monitoring Certificate of Competence. This enables them to begin monitoring the health of the River Worth.
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To find out more about getting involved and to book onto any of the sessions please head over to the Aire Rivers Trust website via this link Riverfly - Aire Rivers Trust or contact sam.riley-gunn@aireriverstrust.org.uk
 
Not only will you be helping to check for pollution, it's also a great way to find out more about the ecology of the river
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Along the River Worth itself, between Ponden and the confluence in Keighley with North Beck, 6 definite nest sites were identified where adults were seen feeding young.  Nothing was reported to suggest there were any more pairs, except possibly in among the industrial buildings at Ingrow where observation is not so easy.  Individual birds were occasionally reported downstream of the North Beck confluence towards the River Aire, but no nesting identified.
 
Individual birds were reported on Bridgehouse Beck between Ebor Lane and the River Worth confluence, but observations implied that these were birds from either of 2 nearby territories on the Worth itself.
 
Above Haworth on Bridgehouse Beck, Dunkirk Beck and Leeming Beck, no actual nest sites were confirmed, but 4 likely territories were identified, and in at least one of these breeding was successful as fledglings were seen.
 
On North Beck, individual birds were reported at 2 separate locations, around Goose Eye and both sides of Castle Mill, but again no actual nest sites were identified nor breeding confirmed.
 
Thank you to those of you who have taken the trouble to send us your reports.  We hope to have another go next year, learning from our experiences this year, and ideally with a few more folks joining in.  We were struggling for a while to make any sense of a lot of isolated sightings, then in the space of a few days in mid May it became much easier to locate nests as both parents were frantically to and fro trying to satisfy the voracious appetites of their young in the nest.  It appeared that breeding was remarkably synchronised along the river.
 
Dippers are renowned for liking nest sites under bridges, but not all our nests by any means were under bridges, it seems that the old stone walls built all those years ago to contain the river provide an almost unlimited array of possible holes for nesting.  The grey wagtails think so too!

At River Worth Friends we are very excited about our AGM (not really but you have to say that sort of thing!), it will be our first ever annual general meeting.

River Worth Friends was formed about four years ago to work to both improve the river as a habitat for wildlife and also to show the local community what an asset the river could be to them. Of course covid and the ensuing lockdowns stopped face to face meetings so we have never got round to having a proper live business meeting. With the exciting new developments on the river we thought it was time to correct that.

The River Worth Restoration Project with the Aire Rivers Trust and Keighley Big Local, involves a lot of volunteer work to enhance access along the river and to  improve wildlife habitat in the river. A network of water monitors has also been set up to keep a check on the water quality in the river. We also have plans for events to celebrate the river later in the year.

We have a great team of volunteers who come out to help with our weekly litter picks and river clearances but there is a lot of organising that goes on behind the scenes, the AGM will help to highlight some of this back room activity and hopefully encourage people to become involved. 

​It should be an interesting evening and also a way to find out more about the workings of the RWF.

​The river Worth and it’s tributaries certainly fit into the picture of widespread river pollution outlined in the Paul Whitehouse programs. A look at the River Trust Poo Map, which details all the combined sewage outflows (CSO’s) in the country, shows that the Worth catchment has its fair share of CSO's and that they are regularly discharging raw sewage into the river. If you zoom the map to around Ingrow and click on the largest spots you will see that the South ​Street Keighley CSO (Permit no.WRA8110) discharged 83 times for a total of 1390 hours, Ingrow Lane CSO (Permit no. 3054 ) discharged 57 times for a total of 917 hours. You can also see that there are not full records for Ingrow Lane as there were technical problems, so the discharges may have been longer. In all there were 23 CSO’s discharging for 4,563 hours into the Worth catchment.

So the river has pollution problems. Some may say “Well it’s always been like that what’s new, it’ll never change”. We would say that shows limited ambition, the river has improved immensely since the days of heavy industrial pollution, with some TLC it could develop further to be a green ribbon running through our communities.

​Even if you are not part of the Monitoring Hub you can still look out for pollution and other river issues. If you see anything you think looks wrong go to our Report an Incident page to find out how to report it. Failing that you can always join one of our weekly litter picks, contact us to find out when they are
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We hope that by a combination of local volunteer activity combined with pressure on our government to do the right thing nationally we will be able to improve conditions on the Worth and all our rivers.

Paul Whitehouse certainly didn’t pull any punches in his programs on river pollution in which he appears to lay the blame at the feet of the water companies, with a supporting role for farmers. However, in a way why would we be believe otherwise? The water companies are run by investment companies who are more interested in profit than in the quality of the water in our rivers.   Yorkshire Water, for instance, is owned by the Kelda Group which is in turn owned by:

• Government of Singapore investment Corporation (GIC SI, Singapore).
• Corsair Infrastructure Management
• Deutsch Asset Management (Germany)
• SAS Trustee Corporation (Australia)

On Corsair’s website they trumpet  “Our purpose is simple, to create value inclusive of financial returns on behalf of our investors and portfolio companies.”
 
So we can’t expect the water companies to have the health of our rivers at heart. The only way to  make them do the right thing is by regulation.
 
There are two bodies that regulate the water companies:

• The Office of Water Services (OFWAT). This body’s main interest is in regulating the economic interests of the consumer, ensuring the provision of cheap water both now and in the future. It has little influence on environmental matters and is more concerned with keeping charges down.
• The Environment Agency (EA). The EA’s aim is “to protect or enhance the environment, taken as a whole" with the "the objective of achieving sustainable development" ( Environment Act 1995). The Agency reports to and is funded by the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs.

 
One of the EA’s main regulatory duties is looking after our rivers. Unfortunately  the Government has cut its funding by 56% since 2010 (Independent 29/8/22).  Little surprise that the EA finds it increasingly difficult to monitor the quality of our rivers. We understand that in recent years the number of EA staff tasked with investigating pollution incidents on the Aire have dropped from ten to two which, inevitably, means less effective monitoring. That is two inspectors to cover the whole Aire catchment from Malham down to Goole!
 
So it’s possible Paul Whitehouse missed an opportunity to point the finger at another culprit rather than just the Water Companies – the Government.
 
But all is not lost, and in our next blog we will suggest ways in which we can do things locally to make a difference.

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You don't need to be a full blown twitcher to help, just reporting seeing a dipper when you are by the river will help. We are asking for people to report all sightings of dippers, and the activity of the bird at the time, which may be a simple fly-past, gathering nesting material, feeding, and maybe taking that food back to a nest for the young, the surest confirmation that breeding is taking place.  In making these observations, please never get too close to disturb the birds. If you are familiar with What3words location finder a what3words location would be  a great help but if you are not into the tech. then a straight forward description of the location is good.
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At the end of the breeding season we will collate the observations to form a map of dipper presence on the Worth. Depending on the results of the survey, next year we may install dipper nest boxes under suitable bridges along the river.

If you would like to help with the survey please email us on riverworthfriends@gmail.com

​Happy spotting!

​River Worth Friends are looking for volunteer pollution hunters.

​River Worth Friends are constantly on the lookout for pollution entering the river and often report incidents to the Environment Agency. However this is just done on a rough and ready basis, so we have decided to take a more active approach to pollution spotting.

​To combat this we are setting up a network of volunteers to check the water quality, look for illegally discharging CSO’s and report incidents to the EA. Water quality can be checked by 

So we are looking for volunteers. If you are interested we will be having a meeting to explain the scheme at The Bronte Hotel, Lees Lane, Haworth, BD22 8RA, on Thursday 26th January (see flyer below for more details). No experience or special knowledge is required to be a monitor as full training will be given. Joining the monitoring network is a good way to get out by and even in the river and to find out more about the its ecology. Plus you are helping to improve it for the people and wildlife.

​​Looking forward to seeing you at the Bronte on the 26th.
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 This restoration project could transform how we relate to the Worth and it's tributaries, come along to one of these events if you want to have a say about how this will be. It would be great to meet you and hear your views.

​The strength of public opinion forced the government into an embarrassing  last minute climb down on sewage discharges in the Environment Bill of 2021 (Times 26/10/21), they were forced to introduce additional measures to make water companies limit the amount of sewage reaching our rivers and beaches. However many of these measures are long term and the funding for Environment Agency enforcement remains very limited following considerable cuts in funding in recent years.
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​Recently a number of Environment Agency employees have expressed their concerns over the agency limiting their options to investigate pollution incidents. The repeated funding cuts mean the number of investigators has been reduced over the years, now the agency has a policy of only investigating level three incidents and just recording more minor events. (Guardian 20/1/22).

More good news on the pollution penalty front was the recent statement from the Environment Secretary Ranil Jayawardena that he will raise the penalty for discharging sewage into rivers from a paltry £250,000 to a refreshingly punitive £250 million. The aim being to make the water companies sit up and take notice and really clean up their acts. (Daily Telegraph 30/9/22)
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​So it seems that public pressure is bringing some improvement in our rivers and on our beaches. But they are a slippery bunch these politicians and polluters! We need to keep the pressure on both to make sure they follow through with their promises, especially the water companies. A good turnout at the Rodley demonstration will send a firm message to Yorkshire Water. River Worth Friends will be there, we hope others who care about our rivers will also be able to come and make their voice heard.