Letters to the Editor - August 2011

I wonder if anyone could tell me why the hedgerows in many areas are now cut back so hard and so early in the year.

Until recent years it has been so pleasant to wander along the Herefordshire lanes in summer, picking blackberries and enjoying the lovely wild flowers, particularly the wild roses and honeysuckle. It seems to be a general practice now to cut the hedges in summer before the fruits and berries are ripe.

The hedges are also cut back much lower which leaves little protection for the birds and small animals during the winter. Last autumn I drove through Herefordshire, Shropshire and Cheshire and it seemed generally that the hedges had been cut back severely but in one area the hedges had been allowed to grow as before, and there was a riot of colour and a mass of berries which would provide plenty of food for the wildlife during winter.

It is not surprising that birds were found dead locally during the last winter as it must have been a struggle for the little creatures to find food.

Mrs S Andrews, Herefordshire

The article Modern Day Eyesores (June) was very interesting and informative. I once stayed in mid-Germany on a farm on which wind turbines had been placed at intervals. I did not find they detracted but added to the landscape’s appeal. As a town dweller I did not find their sound intrusive. I often read letters protesting about wind farms; I wonder if any of these people have ever actually stayed near one?

D Abbott, Stratford-Upon-Avon

Has the topsy-turvy weather this year affected song-bird behaviour?

While encouraging the reluctant new grass seed sown on the bald patches of the lawn with water, during the unseasonably dry period, I was startled by a hen blackbird which flew close by me carrying nesting material and it entered a large letter-box style nesting refuge I had created for use by robins.

Three eggs appeared later and the nestlings were successfully reared. However, at the end of May, while walking two of my great-grandchildren around the garden, four-year-old Chloe-Leigh gave an exclamation and pointed at the box. The hen blackbird was again in possession and I subsequently established that three more eggs had been laid there.

A A Sipson, Dunstable

A recent Gardeners Question Time panel on BBC Radio 4 gave valuable advice on garden plants for butterflies.

They advised against the removal of weeds. Long before there were gardens and gardeners, butterflies flourished on wild flowers now called weeds and so destroyed. These plants are essential not so much for the butterflies who can obtain nourishment from many flowers but for their caterpillars.

These often require specific plants, for example garlic mustard, for orange tip and holly blue whose caterpillars enjoy ivy and dogwood as well as holly. I tolerate the latter in my little garden and was rewarded with my own colony of holly blues who survived for two or three years.

Then, one spring, birds discovered little green caterpillars and flew away with all of them. I am sure they were good food for their chicks but I mourn for my lost blues.

Gardeners please heed the advice of experts. Have a wild ‘untidy’ space in your garden for wildlife, especially butterflies.

Michael Barnard, Lewes, Sussex

I enjoyed living in the countryside a decade ago but now I feel I am living on a battle ground. I am worn out sending off the pests which visit or come here to live on this five-acre holding. Being in poor health and elderly I may be classed as stupid but still I persevere with feeding the songbirds, farmland birds and water birds that visit, and sending off the predators.

Of course many of the predators one can’t do anything about because of our stupid laws. We are infested with grey squirrels that move in when others are dispatched. Rooks and magpies not only help to wipe out our songbirds but also our frog life. Baby ducklings are soon eaten by these two birds.

The great spotted woodpeckers of which we have three, damage the tits who feed on the fat balls and peanuts and soon these pecked little birds die. The sparrowhawk often arrives daily after feeding blackbirds, and females are often seen being carted away. Buzzards also take our blackbirds, pheasant chicks and small rabbits.

My wildflower meadows were wrecked last year by an exploding population of rabbits and moles. For all the silly people who say the countryside can manage without humans then think again. Soon we will end up with no songbirds or farmland birds except for some we don’t want in large numbers.

H Wooldridge, Worcs

In his excellent Focus on Farnham, Jack Watkins states that “…a lot of people would never expect to use the words Surrey and Countryside in the same sentence”, but even an area as suburban as Surbiton could yield some surprises.

Before World War Two the Southern Railway planned to extend their Waterloo to Chessington line to Leatherhead, but the war stopped the work, although much of the embankment had already been built, apparently abandoned, and it became a haven for wildlife.

One day I took a walk along it and found twenty-nine species of wild flowers besides the commonest weeds. My list included early purple orchid, spotted orchid (some two feet tall) dark mullein, grass pea, St.John’s Wort, wild mignonette, yellow rattle and four species of vetch.

John Reed, Aylesbury

While we enjoyed Richard Hesketh’s article, Spring Gives Birth to Verse (April), we wondered why he chose to refer to Robert Burns as ‘Robbie’ Burns – after all, he is Scotland’s National bard.

How about ‘Willie’ Shakespeare or ‘Billy’ Wordsworth or ‘Chrissie’ Rossetti or even ‘Alfie’ Tennyson would seem fitting; Burns may have been a farmer among other things but as a poet and philosophical writer he stands high in the literary world and surely deserves at least as much respect as the others.

Hamish MacColl, Kirkby Stephen