Archive for category: News

Fields. Uckfield, Framfield, Heathfield, Isfield, Maresfield, Rotherfield, Mayfield, Hartfield, Henfield, Cuckfield, Itchingfield, Staplefield, Lindfield, Netherfield, Westfield, Mountfield, Catsfield and Ninfield, are all places nearby where the trees have been felled. It is (was) our great Albion’s Andredes weald, meaning “the forest of Andred” a Roman region reduced and renamed Pevensey by Anglo-Saxons (meaning “River of [a man named] Pefen”). Anderida Forest extended over Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Settlers felled trees forming clearings to build villages. The clearings maybe got the local name first, assigned by the folk who created them. The village names then followed. Now, we have more clearings (fields) than forest, because further clearings allowed the ground to be farmed to provide food for the villagers. However, most food we now eat from day to day is no longer grown in a felled area down the lane. Much of it even comes from different lands, the Americas, Africa and Eurasia. Now, just short of 14% of the UK is woodland, up from about 9% in the 1980s. This increase is good, because it shows we are making progress with planting trees and allowing some ecological succession to progress from fields back to woodland.

In some ways, UK leads the way in combatting climate change globally. Our carbon dioxide footprint is better per capita ranked 70th/208 in 2023 (Wikipedia) than many other leading countries. However, our species decline record is not so good. Insect loss is particularly worrying, because they are an essential part of a balanced ecosystem. It is easy to make toxic chemicals that kill insects, and these chemicals are used to maximise crop yields, control flies, ants, and wasps, all to make our lives easier in the short-term. However, many plants and animals depend on insects to survive, including birds such as swifts and swallows that eat nothing else, and just about any land-bird species raising a family. E.g. just one family of blue tits requires up to 1,000 insects per day for about 20 days when nesting. Also, a rare bird of prey called a honey buzzard specialises in eating copious bees and wasps. No surprise that this bird is rare, because wild honeybees are also now rare, and we are good at killing wasps. Hot news – I saw a swallow (Pevensey Bay) hunting insects on 3rd January 2025!

Also, consider local places called …hurst; Penshurst, Staplehurst, Ticehurst, Hawkhurst, Goudhurst, Wadhurst, Lamberhurst, Speldhurst, Ashhurst, and Sandhurst. Hurst is probably Anglo-Saxon (German), meaning woodland thicket or wooded hillock. Forests in these localities are probably very old and home to biodiverse ancient woodlands. Humans are ecosystem engineers, whose ancestors lived and worked much closer to nature than us now. However, the further we get from nature, the less we consider its welfare, often writing it off as collateral damage as we build towards some “greater goal”. Ultimately, nature is our essential life support system. All things originate from nature.

“Asia is home to about 4.5 billion people. More than the rest of the world put together.” This is a quote from the 7-part documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough. This remarkable series should still be available to watch on BBC iPlayer. I do strongly advise this. A striking aspect of the constituent films is learning how wild animals have integrated with the people of this huge continent. Among many other animals, we see sequences of sika deer traversing a zebra crossing over a busy road with people able to touch them as they walk, just as if the deer were also human. There is no fear or hostility between them. Sika deer are close relatives of our own fallow deer. Another sequence includes 2-metre-long monitor lizards squabbling over food in an Asian public park in the middle of a city, where there are also flying red squirrels gliding between the skyscrapers. Tigers were coming into a city to feed at night, but not on humans. Elephants are demanding food tolls on busy Sri Lankan roads which they block until paid with a cob of sweet corn or loaf of bread, which is willingly given by the drivers. Humans and animals living in modern harmony.

Some of the footage is filmed by camera traps. These are night vision cameras triggered by movement. I set one up in our Uckfield suburban garden. I was delighted to record red foxes and Eurasian badgers, foraging for food and enjoying themselves in the darkness. I also see common frogs, a grass snake and many invertebrates. I feed birds with sunflower hearts. Delightfully, the garden hosts breeding blue and great tits, wrens, robins, blackbirds, house sparrows, collared doves and wood pigeons. Also, greenfinches, nuthatches, great-spotted woodpeckers, coal tits, long-tailed tits, starlings, jackdaws, goldcrests, song thrushes, chiffchaffs, treecreepers, bullfinches, carrion crows and sparrowhawks all visit and looking splendid. We recently ‘house-sat’ for our son at Rushlake Green and were delighted to see fallow deer walking through the wood, visible from bed early one morning. We are integrating with nature. We just need to be observant and friendly to animals around us and not see them as enemies but potential friends. As our human population grows, it is currently at c. 8.2 billion, the only way to preserve the natural world is to learn how to integrate with it. To me, there is no such thing as vermin; from Latin ‘vermis’, meaning worms, it is a biased derogatory term that some have chosen to use for animals they dislike and persecute, as pests, often un-necessarily.

As we come to understand ecology (home-study) we realise that a balanced ecosystem will control excessive numbers of most organisms that bother us. Good animal husbandry and home management will usually prevent inter-species conflict. An attitude of kindness to nature will lead to extraordinary discoveries within the natural world around us, both at home and the ones presented so well by Sir David Attenborough and others on our televisions.

It is early November. As I look out from my study window, an oak tree in front of me is showing hues of brown and yellow among the disappearing green if its leaves. I have mentioned before that deciduous trees are the exception globally. Most planetary trees are evergreen and live in the tropics. The rest live in the boreal ecosystem between latitude 50 and 70. Between these latitudes temperatures often drop to minus 20° C and below. But hey, that is us is it not? Ah yes, but Britain is exceptionally mild for our latitude. We (e.g. London) are roughly on the latitude (55° N) shared by Saskatoon (52° N) in Canada, and Moscow (55° N) in Russia. Most (but not all) of the natural trees in the latter 2 locations are evergreen and conifers. However, most of our native trees are deciduous. We only have 3 native conifers, and 2 of them do not have cones (but berries) as we know them, these are Juniper and Yew. The third native conifer is Scots Pine. All other conifers are alien to Britain. Some conifers are also deciduous, such as the Florida Swamp Cypress and the Larches.

So why are we special? Well, firstly we have the Atlantic conveyer, also known as the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic drift/current. This is warm water brought to our shores in Britain that influences our climate, making us warmer than we should be at our Latitude. Our prevailing wind is also a south westerly, doing the same thing. However, if the wind direction changes to an easterly or northerly, we get correspondingly cooler. Even very cold down to about minus 16° C occasionally. That is when we lose our exotic plants if they are outside.

The flowers of our native plants tend to be rather small such as birds foot trefoil and vervain. If they are abundant such as bluebell and primrose, they make a fantastic show, but to make an impression in our gardens, we like to import large showy flowers like dahlias, tulips and hollyhocks. These may be the first to suffer when we get a sharp frost. However, there is a trend now to plant wildflower seeds in our gardens, and this is good, because many of our insects are best adapted to native plants. Plants did not have flowers until insects appeared. They act as visual attractants to insects. There is now a fantastic dependence by flowers on insects to pollinate them, to produce viable seeds, and also a dependence of insects upon the nectar and pollen that they collect from the plants. However, many insects have also discovered (like we have) that the leaves of many plants taste good and are also nutritious. The insects that eat the leaves also become nutritious and are essential to insectivorous birds such as swifts, swallows and blue tits. Who in turn are essential food for sparrowhawks, hobbies and merlins. All birds of prey eventually die, and are then consumed by microorganisms, insects such as sexton beetles or carnivores such as foxes. So the cycle of life goes on.