Myfield in April

The early part of April was marked by the sudden warmth in the weather and its equally speedy demise. March ended on a high - 21.9 recorded at Pitsford Weather Centre, - and even though we were still getting 15 during the day that drop of 6 or so degrees was quite noticeable. This was our first trip of the month round Myfield, with forecast of frosts to come and even snow. However the bright thing was that the blackthorn was well and truly out. There were also lots of larks and yellowhammers, the odd buzzard and a quacking raven but none of them particular bothered about anything, least of all the weather. 

The field has been drilled but I don’t know with what as yet. The celandines continue to be the main splash of colour at ground level but there are a few dandelions about. 

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As we walked round the field our discussion turned to the notion of rewilding, a concept that has certainly caught the imagination of people but is as nebulous as the clouds in the sky. Rewilding suggests, infers, a return to some previous situation but what situation? How far back? We all have a nostalgia for long-lost days. We recognise the changes that have gone on while we think we have stood still. The moth snowstorms are a good example of how something that was so common is now so rare. Or further back: before the mechanisation of farms, to smaller fields and more hedges? Or back to non-enclosed land, much open to all? Or back to the early farmers, those taking their first steps from hunter-gatherers?

There probably is not an appropriate time to return to. The size of the population, the need and the greed for resources, the inherent superiority of man over everything, there is no way those genies can be returned to their bottles. So perhaps it is the wrong word. Perhaps it should be ‘wilding’ but even then these things have to be managed, sometimes to kickstart, sometimes to continually control the boundaries. 

Whether it is large scale projects, like Knepp, or small attempts in our gardens, perhaps the important thing is to change the mindset to embrace the idea that there needs to be a shift in the equilibrium of things. Unless we decide that all human life needs to be eradicated, true re-wilding cannot take place; what we need is to rebalance.

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By the middle of the month the weather had returned to what we seem to accept: cold. Actually, on the 17th though it was cold when we set out it was quite warm on the way home and had turned into a glorious day with little cloud. The stream in the ditch was quite low (we were halfway through a 16 day run with no rain) and the field edges were beginning to thicken up with young cow parsley covering most things, the arum lilies and the cleavers being relentlessly subsumed by the next round of greenery. 

The Peacock

The buzzards overhead were calling to each other and a collection of mixed corvids were ignoring all, working their way across the adjacent fields on foot and by the odd flutter of wings. Myfield looked neatly tilled. As the day warmed the butterflies came out with orange tips and brimstones adding a bit of movement on the verges. 

The following week we were in the midst of another period of clear skies, perfectly blue. With the nights only just above freezing it was lucky that no blossom had been struck - as yet. Myfield had been sown with a cereal and the margins mown leaving a metre or so in front of the hedge. The flitting orange tips were joined by peacocks and the first green-veined white of the year for me. Flowers were beginning to colour the margins: the yellow of dandelions and celandine; the white of lesser stitchwort, if you looked for it, and the more noticeable white nettle, and cow parsley. There were still violets down the track to the clay pit. Looking up, a buzzard was being mobbed by a corvid, slightly more emphatically than last time.

…the first green-veined white of the year…

Today is National Trust blossom day, which is a good thing but why import all these blossom trees from Japan? Several have been planted in a nearby village some bemusement. There is plenty of blossom about at the moment, and around Myfield the blackthorn is covered in billowing clouds of it. The blackthorn blossoms on the naked branch and generally before the hawthorn which has its young leaves out by time it flowers. Hawthorn, which tends to come out next month, is often called May.

…blackthorn blossoms on the naked branch…

It’s nearly a month since I heard my first chiffchaff of the year and on the 27th I managed to not only see one but take its picture. A small olive-green warbler, it seems to make itself heard rather than seen as it flits about in trees. The one in the small plantation along the eastern edge of Myfield has been taunting me most of the month, so today I stood, and I stood, and I stood - much to the dog’s frustration I fear. Eventually I saw it going from branch to branch calling whilst moving and grabbing the odd snack.

…I stood, and I stood, and I stood…

Known in times gone by as the Pettichap, or Petty-chap, Gilbert White found it a rare visitor to Selborne and also remarked on its restless movement, “hopping from bough to bough examining every part for food”. He also records it running up the stems of his crown imperials to suck at the nectar, much as blue tits do. Not an obvious garden bird these days, the chiffchaff is thankfully quite common in the countryside. It is also one of the earlier migrants to come here for the breeding season, its call being recorded from the end of February in some places. The UK breeding population according to the BTO covers some 1.2 million territories though as few as under 1000 choose to stay over winter here, most preferring the warmer climes of Southern Europe and Northern Africa. John Clare wrote about the Pettichap’s Nest in his last book, The Rural Muse (1835):

…. Small bits of hay
Pluck'd from the old propt haystack's pleachy brow,
And withered leaves, make up its outward wall,
Which from the gnarl'd oak-dotterel yearly fall,
And in the old hedge-bottom rot away.
Built like an oven, through a little hole,
Scarcely admitting e'en two fingers in,
Hard to discern, the birds snug entrance win.
'Tis lined with feathers warm as silken stole,
Softer than seats of down for painless ease,
And full of eggs scarce bigger even than peas!