Feeding the hens and fallen trees

I WENT down to feed the hens the other morning and my path was blocked by a fallen tree. It was a medium-sized sycamore and a couple of years ago it had been damaged by a grey squirrel.

The sycamore is a member of the maple family and maples have sugary sap. Squirrels strip their bark off to get at this sweet delicacy.

The bark stripping hadn’t killed the tree. It seemed healthy last summer and came into a full leaf again a few weeks ago. But then there was a night of wind and rain. The rain added weight to the top of the tree and the crop of large new leaves acted as sails. One gust broke the trunk at a point a couple of metres above the ground where it had been weakened by the squirrel. It will probably grow back eventually but in the meantime I have to get out the chainsaw to clear the path.

It really has been a wintry May here in the midlands. Night frosts, wind and rain and even some sleet and hail. May is a very crucial month for many wild creatures so the weather for the past few weeks is not good news.

It’s bad news for birds, particularly for those that nest on the ground.

The pheasants round here have lost all their first broods. Pheasant poults are extremely vulnerable to death from hypothermia for the first week or so after they hatch.

What really kills them is persistent rain. They hatch fully fledged and their feathers will protect them from the cold as long as the feathers are dry. But wet feathers have little insulation value and if a young bird gets saturated it will not last the night.

Persistent wind and rain will also deter winged insects from taking to the air. This has implications for birds and bats that depend on them for food. Swallows and martins arrive in this country emaciated after a long migration. They immediately set about the exhausting business of nesting and rearing a brood. They are crucially dependent on large numbers of high protein winged insects that they catch in the air.

SWALLOW and martin nests are well protected from the weather. But this is no advantage if there isn’t enough food for the young birds when they hatch.

Some of the bad effects of a wet and windy May are immediate and some are long term. Many wild trees and shrubs are in blossom at present. This blossom must be pollinated by insects and fruit must set if there is to be sufficient food in the hedgerows this autumn and winter.

But in bad weather many of the pollinating insects are crouched in shelter instead of flying from blossom to blossom. Even when there is an interval of better weather between the showers the insects discover that much of the blossom has been knocked off the trees by wind and heavy rain.

Many people believe that the abundance of haws, sloes and rose hips predicts the severity of the winter to come. It doesn’t. It reflects the severity of the weather the previous spring. And it looks as though many birds and small mammals will have a tough time of it this winter.

There are other long-term effects as well. Seed germination is delayed in cold, water-logged soil. Soil temperature also affects the speed of grass growth and this in turn has an effect on grazing animals. Rabbits and hares are starting to get a bit hungry too as their litters of new young compete with the adults for grass that is growing more slowly than usual.

It all amounts to a rather depressing picture. Still, it has to get better. Maybe by the time you read this things will have returned normal. I hope so.

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