(^52) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
subject to regular cycles of cropping and regrowth, but they also, like many
of the other environments I have discussed, displayed elements of stability
and continuity. Shrubb, among others, has suggested that old timber was
‘rather scarce in farmland’ in the period before the agricultural revolution,^65
but this is probably incorrect, in ‘woodland’ areas at least. Because pollards
continued to be cropped into senescence, a high proportion were already,
in the seventeenth century, probably ‘veteran’ specimens, for many of these
districts had been well hedged since medieval times.
village and farmstead
The homes of humans, as much as the land they cultivated or otherwise
exploited, were habitats and feeding grounds for a wide range of fauna.
Within the mainly timber-framed or stone-built houses, a distinctive
invertebrate fauna would have been found, just as it can in our own homes,
although then probably more extensive. Many were aliens which had
come to England in remote prehistory with the first farming communities.
What their original habitats may have been is often unknown: a significant
proportion are no longer found in the wild anywhere in the world.^66 Large
numbers of birds were attracted to houses, gardens and outbuildings,
especially perhaps in champion areas where there was often relatively little
cover in the surrounding fields. The situation may have been similar to
that which today pertains in the more intensively farmed arable districts of
England. Wyllie in 1976 found that bird densities in one Cambridgeshire
village were seven times greater than those in the surrounding fields.^67
In most champion districts, the majority of trees were to be found in the
village ‘envelope’ – a situation again paralleled in modern arable districts,
although with the difference that in the seventeenth century most would
have been pollarded – and in general terms those farmland birds with a clear
preference for woodland and wood-edge habitats – wren, blackbird, robin,
tits and chaffinch – will have predominated.^68 Some birds also roosted, or
nested, in houses and farm buildings: most obviously swallow, house martin
and barn owl, but also robin, blackbird, wren, jackdaw, starling, and tawny
owl, seeking out spaces in roofs and lofts, and holes in walls and thatch.^69
But food as well as shelter made villages and hamlets magnets for birds.
Unlike most rural settlements today, early-modern examples contained
numerous working farms, and birds fed freely on spilt grain, weed seeds and
threshing residues, as well as on the hay, oats and other foodstuffs intended
for stalled cattle and horses. Muck heaps and middens would have ensured
high densities of invertebrates; kites, ravens, carrions crows and buzzards
would have been drawn to lambing sheds; and bullfinches to orchards
(Gilbert White described in 1777 how ‘the scenes around the village are
beautifully diversified by the bloom of the pear-trees, plums and cherries’).^70
Mammal residents were more limited, although rats and mice would have
elle
(Elle)
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