(^10) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
became real generalists, able to live on most kinds of farm and indeed in
most conditions, including towns and cities. Others are more selective.
Linnets, brambling and corn buntings, for example, are especially associated
with arable holdings, often feeding on the fields in great flocks in the winter,
while species like dunnock, yellowhammer, common whitethroat, tree pipit,
chaffinch and long-tailed tit still need the shelter provided by copses and
tall hedgerows, and avoid the more open farms. Such birds shade off into
those which never really adapted to more open conditions, and which are
still largely restricted to woodland, such as the treecreeper, chiffchaff, wood
warbler, pied flycatcher, siskin and redstart.
Rather different are those species, which live in open country, on moors,
heaths and downs, and sometimes also on marshes: birds like the partridge,
grouse, snipe, golden plover, lapwing, skylark, stone curlew, woodlark,
meadow pipit and corncrake. These must have had a fairly restricted
distribution before the advent of farming. All are ground-nesting birds, and
while some are again limited to particular habitats – such as the black grouse,
restricted to heather moors – others are more catholic in their habits, such
as the snipe, the redshank or the golden plover, at home on both moors and
marshes. Like the woodland species, these open-country birds have, albeit
to a lesser and varying degree, adapted to the new conditions of farmland.
But many, especially in the lowlands, were only finally obliged to do so
in the relatively recent past when – as we shall see – large areas of open
‘waste’ were enclosed and reclaimed. Birds like the corncrake and skylark
gradually became a normal part of farmland bird populations but others,
such as the stone curlew or the snipe, have embraced a life in the fields
with less enthusiasm or success. Wetland species also benefited initially from
human change to the environment, for cutting and grazing served to reduce
the amount of alder and willow woodland in waterlogged districts. Some,
such as the mallard and reed bunting, are also now found on farmland, if
sufficient areas of open water are available. But the majority, like the bearded
tit; bittern or the reed warbler; waterfowl like shoveller, wigeon, gadwall
and teal; and migratory waders like black- and bar-tailed godwits, remained
largely or entirely restricted to wetland habitats and suffered serious declines
when these habitats were drained and converted to farmland in the course
of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
indigenous, exotic and naturalized
Agriculture thus served to create, over time, a rich and complex mosaic
of habitats. It also increased species diversity in another way. As well as
introducing new crops and livestock early agriculturalists brought with
them a range of weeds and invertebrates which occupied their fields, as well
as a plethora of organisms adapted to dwelling in their homes. The spread
of agriculture was a diaspora not only of humans with a particular lifestyle,
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(Elle)
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