We Found a New Species
At Brimwood Farm, I seek to indulge in my love of farming and wildlife - working with Mother Nature to produce bountiful crops without negatively impacting our land. Though I’m not looking to completely rewild as in Isabella Tree’s glorious book ‘Wilding’, I do want to have a positive impact. So I encourage as much wildlife as possible and aim to create thriving, sustainable eco-systems that both the farm and its inhabitants can take from whether that’s a windfall of plums that I and the birds snack on, or blackfly encrusted broad bean tips that ladybirds can come and eat.
Throughout the year, it’s essential to document the wildlife spotted. I can compare it year on year via my biodiversity list. And this year has been a bumper year with some great new species discovered!
"Solo Hike Central Pyrenees" by Kitty Terwolbeck is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Stoat
One of the most exciting finds in 2019 was a stoat. There was the flash of brown and a bright black tail as it scurried across the gap between two hedgerows by the wildflower meadow. Any new species identification is welcome, but a predator particularly so. Why? Because for predators to be present there must be enough prey. And with stoats having to eat every 24 hours or they starve to death, there must be ample to eat.
The downsides of having stoat is, of course, it may well want to eat some of my lifestock. A chicken, a pheasant, a rabbit - it’s all a tasty snack. But this whole working-with-mother-nature thing means I’ll just have to build better enclosures and accept a few losses here and there. In the long run, having such a predator around will help to manage wild rabbit and rodent populations that would otherwise eat my crops.
Bullfinch
In my opinion, these are one of Britain’s most gorgeous birds. They’re large as far as finches go, with the hen being a caramel brown and the male a showy smash of powder pink. But they’re secretive, and so rarely seen. It wasn’t until I was sat in the car preparing to drive home, that a lone hen popped out of the hedgerow. And if there’s one, there are probably more - I’m hoping, of course, for a breeding pair.
Birds are way more easily recognised by their call, and so identifying our species would be simpler if I knew how they sounded. I’m contemplating buying a British bird sounds CD to give me a better overall diversity list.
"Mrs Bullfinch" by hedera.baltica is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Common Lizard and Frog
Though I’d seen our common British frog before, 2019 was the year I discovered frogspawn at one of the natural pond sites. One of my restoration projects has been to clear and resuscitate this pond from its stagnation and I’ve got an ongoing playlist covering this on YouTube. It’s heartening to see an attempt at breeding, and now I’ve cleared the pond somewhat, I hope 2020 will be the year frogspawn gets as far as tadpoles.
Meanwhile, whilst collecting water from the well tap, I discovered another new species - a common lizard sunning itself on some old wood.
"Common Lizard" by nickpix2012 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Whilst I only saw one, I can’t imagine it just appeared as a sole lizard without any others in the vicinity. I’ll be looking at ways to increase potential habitat for a colony of common lizards during 2020 in an effort to grow their local numbers.
All in all, 2019 has been a great year for spots. Our buzzard pair continue to produce offspring and there are owls a-plenty. Butterfly numbers are on the up and there remain repeat guests and residents of species noted in previous years. Please feel free to check out the diversity list - I continuously add to it and will be offering biodiversity workshops in the future.
I wonder what creatures we’ll discover in 2020?!