Nature

Our primary aim at Tiggins Meadow has always been to let nature do what it wants with us intervening as little as we can get away with. We were fascinated to see what effect limited intervention would have – how quickly would species arrive ? How much diversity would develop? What things would come and what wouldn’t we see that we might have expected to ? We had never done this before so did not know what to expect. How much would the surrounding landscape of intense agriculture affect what happened? Both of us had watched our parents take on a piece of agricultural land – one to turn into a garden (from cattle pasture on the Welsh border side of Herefordshire), and the other to keep as a hay meadow (previously grazed in Northamptonshire) – how would our experience differ?

The picture on the left shows the field in 2008 when we bought it – a bare field with scanty grass which had just been mown when we exchanged purchase contracts.

The pictures below show it in 2018 ten years later. It has amazed us how much has regenerated naturally in that time ! We now have some trees – birches and sallows/willows (typical pioneers) – which are so big we need to cut some of them down, and even trees we expected to be slow growing like oaks have grown in some cases to 4m in height already. The first pioneers were actually ash seedlings, but of course they then got the ash dieback disease so we only have a few survivors. Alders arrived in the last 5 years, along with what we think are hornbeams.

With the rapid growth of trees and bushes we noticed an accompanying growth in the numbers of small birds seen in the field. We have deliberately allowed thickets of bramble to develop as these provide valuable shelter and nesting opportunities for birds – in 2020 we had a first discovery of a linnet nesting in one. We also keep some open ‘glades’ in amongst the densest area of trees as deliberate habitat management and we mow annually to maintain good hunting habitat for barn owls. We now routinely see flocks of goldfinches, tits, and linnets and see plenty of robins, warblers and of course pheasants love the long grass. Highlights include watching barn owls and kestrels hunting, listening to turtle doves calling and having barn owl chicks ringed most years.

We introduced ox-eye daisies, but the yellow rattle which is now spreading widely arrived on it’s own, as did the orchids and all the other flowers which are now abundant.

With the increasing flowers and trees have come increasing numbers and variety of insects, beetles, flies, bees, dragonflies, butterflies and other invertebrates. The strangest we’ve seen was a one-off appearance of willow aphids in 2015 – we have no idea why we’ve only seen them once. Another strange event was finding wasps at night clustered around their nest entrance – sleeping or guarding ? Perhaps both !

We are well aware that much of the natural world is invisible to us – underground, or so small it can’t be seen, or undetectable by humans such as butterfly pheromones, bat calls, fungi and mycelium. But as we learn more and more about the Earth’s ecosystems we understand how very important all these unseen aspects are. We are curious about what is going on in the soil at Tiggins Meadow – certainly the cessation of ploughing has made a massive difference and in the last couple of years we’ve become aware of molehills and worm casts….a good sign that the soil is healthy. I love this illustrated poem which reminds me that nature isn’t static and is going on beneath our feet and in front of our eyes even when we can’t see it. We just need to let it. We have one area of Tiggins Meadow which we have left untouched – we call it The Wilderness. This is deliberate as we are interested to see what happens there compared to the other areas where we carry out some management.

It is hugely important to us that children and adults have time and places where they can explore and study nature. We want to encourage pond dipping, looking under logs, watching antheaps, counting butterflies, using reference books and leaflets to identify plants and creatures, and most importantly using eyes and ears !