Environment

Saturday February 12 

We seem to have no control at all over our environment. 

When we moved into our home, in 1974, beyond the dyke at the bottom of the garden, was a grazing marsh, crisscrossed by more dykes. At the far end was a deciduous woodland. The local Barn Owls hunted the fields. Snipe and Green Sandpipers were regular. In the Summer, Woodcocks roded around the wood. in the early nineties, I came home from work to find that the whole marsh had been planted with saplings.Goodbye Owls. The trees had been planted very close to the bank of our dyke.

By 2000, the trees were rather large and encroaching, their branches reaching out over the dyke. When a digger arrived to dredge the hundred stream into which the dyke runs, the driver was persuaded to do ours too. Not by us, we did not complain as in order to get the digger along the channel, he had to uproot the nearest row of trees.

The wood is now very well grown, encroaching again, yet good for moths. We also have Nuthatches visiting our feeders for the first time. 

At the beginning of the week, we heard machinery along the hundred stream. Digger at work. On Wednesday, after a day's birding, we came home to find a digger at the bottom of our garden, at the other side of the overgrown (deliberate) dyke.

 

Pam investigated as all we could see was tree destruction.

 

 Neighbours further along in the street had complained that water containing sewage was running into their gardens, his job was to dredge the dyke. In order to do this, he had to 'trim back' the trees to allow his machine to travel. Tree butcher, not tree surgeon. 

 

 

He also took out an Elderberry growing at the bottom of our hawthorn hedge as it 'got in the way'. The man was doing his job. A fait accompli. Maybe it will deter the Muntjac for a while.

At the same time, a neighbour has complained to the council about uncut roadside hedges endangering motorists. One feels helpless.

All photographs were taken by Pam.