Letters to the Editor - January 2008

Humans make most impact

It was good to hear Robin Page criticising the RSPB for not controlling predators like foxes, crows and magpies on its Hope Farm – Robin being concerned about the minute number of grey partridge there. Yellowhammers and skylarks were also said to have increased in number.

For several years five yellowhammers visited for ground seed here outside my home but last autumn they didn’t come. The only (not local) visitors were the long tail tits and one solitary pied wagtail while Panda, the neighbour’s albino blackbird, came just for winter food. Our many blackbirds used to send him off but due to sparrowhawks we now have no blackbirds coming for food.

This autumn we had a knot visit us which had never previously appeared, and for two days it took water from the bowl. We also had a green woodpecker – the first one since great spotted woodpeckers made this their territory.

There are foxes on my smallholding but I contend they do little damage to the wildlife here. Foxes seem to live on a fruit diet when wild cherries, damsons and apples fall off trees. We can tell by their droppings. They also enjoy the occasional grey squirrel which has been killed. They have the odd pheasant but humans and buzzards do more damage to these, and foxes have made little impact on the rabbit population living next door to them in burrows.

H. Wooldridge, Rock, Worcs

Beavers will upset balance

Many conservationists are not at all happy about the reintroduction of beavers into Scotland, especially at a time when our salmon rivers are recovering after a period of dreadful decline. Beaver dams will have the effect of creating fishing pools for cormorants targeting salmon par.

Wales is suffering a drastic decline in its farmland and moorland bird populations. Red kites are now, evidently, big eco-tourism business based on artificial feeding. Lapwing and curlew chicks will doubtless also be part of their diet. Buzzards have increased by 414 per cent (BTO figures). They predate on brown hares (leverets) extensively.

Reintroduction and artificial encouragement of existing predators can so easily upset the balance in our existing wildlife populations, and it behoves powerful organisations like the RSPB, together with government agencies, to be more circumspect in such programmes.

Keith McDougall, Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk

Food supply is the problem

Re contagious and infectious diseases in the countryside and their consequences: The badger does a very good job, going about in daylight hours looking for the hidden nest of the striped wasp, which it plunders, and then devours the inhabitants. They were once considered an asset and held to be a help to farmers, being kept as pets on the farm. TB attested herds were once the norm and cattle managed somehow to keep fit and healthy, so how was this possible? Were they given protection against the prevalent diseases?

Any bovine with contagious disease has probably caught it from the feed, perhaps engendered by contaminated delivery vans. I believe the supply is the premier source of infection, and that to safeguard the process from start to finish, animal feed should be grown on the farm, or nearby – the best and most traditional way and perhaps how they managed in the 1700s?

The badger need not always be regarded as the instigator of the infection.

Mrs W F Bottomley, Camberley, Surrey

Inspired to pick up pen

Firstly may I, like many others have done recently, congratulate you and your team for the redesigned Countryman magazine. It’s excellent. In the October edition there was an article entitled Timeless portraits of Wessex wildlife. My husband and daughter both love to paint and draw. My daughter Emma aged thirteen years was so inspired by the article she drew the fox and I have enclosed a copy of her drawing for you to see, right. I wanted you and the editorial team to see how you inspire young people still.

Lorraine Wisedale, by email

Same stupidity the world over

Can I thank you for your marvellous magazine; it is the one thing that keeps me up to date with what is going on in my mother country. Your contributors are interesting, down to earth, commonsense people with very valid ideas in this time of political nonsense and globalisation. A lot of the stupidity over there seems to mirror itself over here to the detriment of the rural community. It is a shame more rural people do not go into politics but there again when you see the standards of today’s politicians it is understandable why they don’t, and having to deal with the bureaucrats would be mind-numbing.

We are getting over the equine influenza debacle here and have had to deal with different government departments that don’t communicate with each other and need umpteen dozen forms filled out in triplicate.

W M Waterman, Mangrove Mountain, New South Wales

Our persecuted piebalds

We were intrigued this time last year (our antipodean spring) to see a partly piebald male blackbird on our lawn. He was given a fairly hard time by other male blackbirds, but evidently survived to find true love, because we now have two partly pied male birds, a quarrelsome brace, always squabbling and fighting, yet also persecuted by other more normal blackbirds. Both of these birds have the same configuration, the left half of their tail feathers being white, the rest of their plumage normal black. It will be interesting to see whether they will be able to perpetuate their ‘sports’ or whether nature’s ruthless normalisation process will triumph.

Michael Bostock, Hastings, New Zealand

A joy to watch my craftsman grandfather

In my childhood days we shared a rambling old house with my grandparents. My grandfather, being a cabinet maker, had a workshop running across the back of the house. The highlight of my day was to spend time in the workshop, watching him skilfully using the spokeshave or old woman’s tooth to make beautifully carved chairs for the local chapel. He also specialised in small tables with barley sugar legs and the top edged in wooden beading. When he was not working with wood he would repair the family’s shoes, holding a mouthful of brads while he hammered on a new heel. When finished he would seal it with ‘heeball’. During the lunchbreak he loved to entertain me by playing beautiful tunes on a saw with a bow. What a melancholy sound; I loved it.

What a pity that we have lost these skills or the ability to amuse ourselves. No wonder people are bored with today’s way of life. Happy memories.

Mrs B Williams, Langford, Biggleswade

Escaping Hitler

Reading Graham Jennings’ article (November) about leaving Bristol when the bombs began to drop, I felt I had to tell you about my evacuation to the Bristol area. There were four of us girls who had been Brownies at St Mary Magdalene Church at Hendon where the Rev Landon Bell was our priest. He and his wife moved to Bitton, near Bristol, and asked if we would like to go and stay with them. We were Sheila and Pamela Mallery and my sister Kathleen and myself, Margaret Johns. There was also Christine Price, niece of our Brown Owl, who came from New Malden.

We duly left Mill Hill in north west London and made our way to Paddington to board a crowded train. Some of the adults on the train took care of us on the long journey. I cannot remember if it was a tearful farewell. Afterwards we were told Paddington Station was bombed just as we left and when we arrived at Bristol the air raid sirens were going off. We were hurried to Bitton and made comfortable in the large vicarage. There were air raids but I only remember the nights when we went down into the huge cellar where there were mattresses all over the floor, and being told that incendiary bombs had fallen around the village.

As the vicarage evacuees we were made welcome and invited everywhere. One lady, Mrs King, lived in a big house on the hill, and I remember she showed us a chair made of wooden cotton reels. We used to go for lovely walks and collect wildflowers – kingcups, primroses, bluebells, violets etc. I remember walking to Upton Cheney and Ripley Bottom. One of the girls in the village invited me for tea when she was on holiday from boarding school, and we sat in the garden eating sweets. She was making up for not being allowed sweets at boarding school.

Sheila and I joined the Guides and one of the lieutenants was Margaret Fairclough, who joined the Land Army, and then became Mrs Goode, the mother of the famous quads. Mr and Mrs King Smith at Kelston allowed the Guides to pitch tents on one of their fields but Sheila and I weren’t allowed to camp. We walked up there each day and learned some of the crafts there. There was a farm just by the church at Bitton. I used to like to go out alone mushrooming in the early morning but one morning I was scared by a cow peering at me through the mist. One day Hitler the bull escaped and went charging down the lane. Thankfully I wasn’t around when that happened. We went to the village school and there were good air raid shelters there. I remember sitting in the shelters but not about the raids.

My sister was very homesick so went back home after about six months. I stayed a year but after winning a scholarship I returned to go to grammar school at Mill Hill. Sheila stayed at Bitton a bit longer and went to a grammar school at Bristol before returning to Mill Hill and attending Hendon County. We had hoped to go to the same school but there wasn’t room apparently. After we all returned we did meet up but we lost touch later in life. My memory is not so good now and I forgot the girls’ married names, and when my husband and I moved from Hampstead to High Wycombe we lost papers and address books.

One thing I do remember is the vicar and the gardener ‘digging for victory’ in the vicarage garden, which was a famous one at one time as a previous vicar had brought plants from abroad. The gardener had a brother who was a gardener at another big house, and he was married to the lovely cook at the vicarage. We kept in touch while they were still alive. Well, I meant to say that Graham Jennings didn’t need to go so far away to appreciate the countryside. However, he learned a lot by doing so, as I feel I learned something by travelling to Bitton from London.

Mrs Margaret Philpot, High Wycombe, Bucks

Badgered

My wife and I were driving along a rural North Shropshire road when we saw a badger struggling up a bank pulling a large rabbit through the hedge – something I have never seen before. It begs the question how did the badger catch the rabbit because the rabbit would have certainly outrun it.

Or was the rabbit stolen from some other animal, such as a stoat or weasel or was it roadkill? I suppose one can say in defence of the badger it is helping to keep down the rabbit population.

John Peake, Ellesmere

Romany

In reponse to November’s query I think the writer of the children’s books recalled was G Bramwell Evens, known as Romany of the BBC. The books were published by the University of London Press. I have one entitled Out with Romany by the Sea and the flyleaf lists several others.

Mrs Evelyn M Brownbill, Lowton, Warrington

False dawn

My family bought me an ornamental sheep for the garden and I moved it for the winter so I could see it from my window. We have a couple of quite friendly crows, Betty and Bob, who make a lot of noise and play with the pigeons. After I moved the sheep Bob became very interested and walked around and had a peck or two. Next day Bob or Betty started picking up sticks and began nest-building in a large tree in the garden. This was the end of October. Do readers think they saw the sheep and thought it was a lamb, and springtime? I only saw them building one day and it was very mild.

Mrs Thelma M Hurcomb, Hereford

Barnworks

The threshing machine (November) is referred to as a ‘huller’. From my experience in East Anglia and Essex a huller is quite a different machine. Whereas the threshing machine – or ‘Barnworks’ as it was referred to because in earlier times the machine was permanently installed in a barn – was used to thresh out barley, oats, rye and wheat, the much-lighter huller was for threshing smaller seeds, turnip for example. The article seems to be centred in Kent where the two terms appear to cross over. In East Anglia and Essex it’s recognised there was a different use for each.

Peter H Rowe, Diss

Goodness me

Your Last Word (Dec) reminded me of a true story told by a neighbour. Her young son went to Sunday school for the first time and returned, saying ‘I’m going to be a bad boy when I grow up’. ‘Why?’ asked the astonished parents. ‘Well, Jesus was very good and look what happened to him’, he replied. Thankfully he grew up to be quite a nice lad.

Mrs Eileen Noble, Bristol

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