Working with nature: notes from Hillside

Across England we've had the sunniest March ever recorded and the 3rd driest March on record! For growers and farmers, the glorious sunshine was frequently accompanied by a dry easterly breeze, exacerbating the drying effect on the soils: for us this meant ewes with lambs in fields but the grass not growing. Good hedges and trees can offer substantial mitigation to these challenging conditions, offering cooling shade to livestock and some decent grazing along the base of the banks.

After a very poor 2024 for birds here at Hillside, we are thrilled that this spring birds are abundant, with the dawn chorus getting truly noisy. Chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, tawny owls, jays, a few chiffchaffs and recently swallows, and a few “little brown jobs” that I don’t recognise. And rather too many magpies and crows!

The brief rain in early April was a relief, if short lived. The hedge shrubs and trees looked a little happier, though many were well behind where we would expect. It was notable that the new stems on two hedges laid in October 2023 and December 2024 had far less leaf growth than the well-established plants and standard trees in other hedges. This is probably because the recently laid trees (the “steepers”) are trying to support leaf growth on several new shoots, few of which will yet have rooted into the bank to form new plants with their own root system. Effectively the old tree root system is trying to support a large number of new trees. This, coupled to the very dry weather, may have exacerbated this growth difference.

On the plus side the sun did see the emergence of several butterflies: a few red admirals, peacocks, speckled woods, orange tips, whites and one painted lady. But it was the welcome - and essential - heavy rains ahead of the Easter weekend that turbocharged all life here. Oak and field maple seemed to leaf up almost overnight! While the white flowers of blackthorn have faded, the bird cherries and wild pear are in flower, and all the hedge plants are now a riot of new growth. The bright yellow of the gorse is being joined by many wild flowers in the shade under the leggy hedge trees, including common dog violet, hundreds of cowslips, dandelions, bluebells, wild garlic, ground ivy, and early campion, to name but a few.

This has been our best year yet for cowslips – over 300 in the 70 metre swale under a hedge bank built in 2013. In damper areas there is plenty of brookweed and ragged robin (although our “resident” doe appears to have eaten all the tops of the ragged robin!). Drifts of greater stitchwort frame the ranks of bluebells. Common fumitory, field speedwell and creeping buttercups are springing up in the fields. We will soon have a bumper crop of foxgloves along the banks, which always make a big splash after laying a hedge.

The hedges and meadows are alive with bees of all shapes and sizes, including solitary mining bees digging burrows into exposed south facing earth banks. Slow worm numbers also seem to have recovered from last year. One bit of not so good news is that the tadpoles in our big and medium ponds have all disappeared. This could be related to healthy newt populations, but also perhaps due to the regular visits by a grey heron.

Also very good news is that bird numbers are greatly up on last year. We have nesting wrens, courting pairs of dunnocks and blackbirds, with the males exhibiting their
extraordinary broken wing routines to draw away potential threats: quite a few goldfinches, robins, chaffinches, a few chiffchaffs, bullfinch, yellow hammers (so well camouflaged in the mass of dandelions), cirl buntings, and the occasional woodpecker. I put out ground feed to help support many of these farmland birds, although
they did pretty well on hoovering up much of the wild flower meadow seed mix around our house!

We also have “Phil”, our tame resident cock pheasant, who also displays clever distracting behaviour when Bosun, our young Black Labrador, gets too close to Phil’s girlfriend “Philly”, by crossing our path with lots of wing beats and vocalisation: works every time! Not being a competent photographer of small wild flowers, instead I have included a photo to show the corner of our largest wildlife pond, built below an ancient hedge bank now dominated by large oaks. I have removed all the wire sheep fencing from around the bank, so that deer can access the pond to drink. The bank hosts a mass of Common Dog Violets which, in combination with the adjacent Oaks, provides perfect habitat for silver Washed Fritillaries, one of our largest and showiest butterflies.

Mike Pearey: Environmentalist, Devon Hedge Group & Tuckenhay Tree Warden, 22 April 2025

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