BBC Wildlife - UK (2020-04)

70 BBC Wildlife April 2020

found their way in – but are still dominated

by hawthorn and are not as varied as those

derived from ancient woodland.

Bed and board

Across Britain, we have been left with the

legacy of a vast network of hedges, which

now act as important wildlife corridors,

allowing smaller mammals to move around

between feeding and nesting sites without

crossing expanses of open fields where they

would be in danger of predation from larger

animals or birds of prey.

As well as helping mammals on the

move, a hedgerow is also the perfect base

for a great number of our wildlife, providing

shelter, safety and nesting sites. In winter,

creatures can burrow down into the bank

below and hibernate, while in summer,

some make small nests in the branches.

Hedgehogs, common shrews, weasels, wood

mice, harvest mice, bank voles, field voles

and more all use the safety of the hedgerow

to create their homes, partly because of

the protective qualities of all that shrubby

growth, but also because hedgerows are a

great source of nuts, berries, seeds and even

• in the case of the rare hazel dormouse –
  flowers to eat.
  Around 80 per cent of British woodland
  birds are also supported by hedgerows and
  many more make use of them. In spring,
  they are breeding spots for robins, song
  thrushes, long-tailed tits, dunnocks and
  lesser whitethroats, while in winter they
  provide holly and hawthorn berries for

deliberately planted during ‘the enclosures’,

when open field systems that had been

communally worked by the rural population

were made into private fields, a process that

happened piecemeal from the 12th century

onwards but picked up pace in the 1700s

and 1800s. This changed the whole culture

of the countryside from one where the

majority undertook subsistence farming,

to one split into landowners and workers.

It heralded a time of great tumult in the

countryside, creating a huge number of

‘rural poor’ with no access to land and no

way to provide for themselves, and was one

of the drivers for the mass exodus from

the countryside to the cities during the

Industrial Revolution.

Hawthorn was the plant of choice for

these fields, and those who had previously

had rights to work the common land to raise

their own crops were often the people who

were paid to plant them, essentially being

employed once in order to lock themselves

out forever. Hawthorn was chosen because

it is dense, thorny and animal- and human-

proof once fully grown, which was possibly

considered more important by the new

landowners than its beautiful display of May

flowers – which see hedgerows exploding

in a great froth of white – or, indeed, its

brilliant usefulness for wildlife.

Fields such as these are more likely to

be large and flat, and the hedgerows long

and straight. These hedgerows have grown

in complexity over the hundreds of years

since they were planted – as seedlings have

Field maple: Tim Gainey/Alamy; hazel dormouse: David Kjaer/naturepl.com (captive); hedge laying: Nick Turner/naturepl.com;

hedgehog: Niall Benvie/rspb-images.com (captive); greenfinch: Bernard Castelein/naturepl.com

Above: the fiery

colour of field

maple adds

autumn interest

to hedgerows.

HEDGEROWS

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H L I G

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HEDGEHOG

Erinaceus europaeus

Ideal habitat for hedgehogs,

hedgerows house the food

they love as well as dry,

sheltered nesting

spots.