May 2009
London Olympics
2012
Activity for the three weeks of the
London Olympics is hotting up. Not that most of the population really
are much bothered ……. . But plans include Europe’s newest urban park,
and the largest new park for 150 years.
The region to the east of London where the Olympic complex is located is
an area of high deprivation and of declining industries. A start to
clean up the area was initiated many years back with the Lee Valley
Regional Park, centred on the River Lee that runs 28 miles from its
source near Luton, due South, all the way to the Thames at Stratford.
This luscious green corridor includes a number of popular ‘honey pots’,
designed for all-the-family interest, water sports locations and nature
reserves. It is the lower section of this extant corridor that will be
enhanced to form the Olympic Park.
Clearly the park will be a valuable asset into the future for the
millions of people living in the immediate area, but short-term the
horticultural industry is ‘licking its lips’ at the thought of all the
plants required!
The idea of using gardens and parks to re-vamp a declining environment
is by no means a new idea. From the 1980s onwards there were a series of
Garden Festivals, the first being on the edge of the River Mersey in
Liverpool, which mixed gardening with urban regeneration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Garden_Festival
Did you ever visit one of the
flower festivals?
Locations and dates were:
· Liverpool Garden Festival, 1984.
· Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival, 1986
· Glasgow Garden Festival, 1988.
· Gateshead Garden Festival, 1990.
· Ebbw Vale Garden Festival, 1992.
Rabbits!
Now you all probably remember Robert Browning’s poem ……..
The Pied Piper Of Hamelin
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.
Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
Etc
Robert Browning
Well our rats seem to be relatively few and far between (compared to the
situation above), but if one were to substitute rabbits (Oryctolagus
cuniculus) for rats then I can quite understand the problems experienced
by the dear folks of Hamelin.
Now do not get me wrong I actually adore our furry friends … but
preferably one at a time. When our two boys were young we had a sequence
of Dutch dwarf-rabbits that latterly generally lived in the house and
even opened their own dried mango slice tub to access their most desired
food. Evening cuddles with a comatose, and dreaming, lagomorph on one’s
lap was the norm. But too many Easter bunnies in the garden, even one
designed for wildlife, does tax one’s patience.
Happily the days of twenty or more rabbits eating down the wild orchids
has been reduced by some rabbit fencing, but we still do have a few that
live in the garden, or move in, from time to time. The few are fine
enough, but keeping the numbers at a modest level is always interesting.
Our last pet rabbit was called Charkie. He narrowly missed being both
buzzard and stoat food during his free wanders around the garden, but
finally was killed by a stoat in his semi-enclosed run by our back door.
He’d reached over eight years of age and had slowed down a bit, even
surviving being deliberately shot by our next-door neighbours’ child,
but his demise was still a sadness. But the tale gives some insight into
the population dynamics of wild rabbits.
Of course rabbits are not naturally found here. Introductions by the
Romans and Normans carried the southern Spanish beast to our shore (and
our spare capacity was sent ‘Down Under’.). But there is now little
chance, and little overall desire, to see the rabbit’s total
extermination. Today many UK predators rely on rabbits for food: stoats
and buzzards amongst them. The increasing populations of native
polecats, that have spread from their Welsh stronghold, will happily
take rabbits whilst badgers, foxes, otters and wildcats will not pass up
on a rabbit meal.
The live weight of rabbit meat in the UK is considerable and now is
precisely the time when that is rapidly increasing. In fact rabbits
breed for much of the year, with high summer being the low spot in my
experience. I guess this summer slow down is related to their Spanish
origin, for hot dry southern European summers generate too little fresh
and nutritious herbage for effective breeding.
Female rabbits often have their young in a breeding ‘stop’ dug someway
from the home warren****. These breeding tunnels have been dug, at
Forest Edge, directly alongside our front door, beneath sheds, in the
open meadow and amongst plant roots. The stops are surprisingly well
camouflaged and even a determined gardener can miss the ominous signs
until the babies are off and running around the garden. We have even had
mothers suckling babies on our patio, whilst we watched with the normal
mixture of horror and delight for the breeding location was immediately
in front of our patio windows!
Female rabbits are tolerant of disturbance, and one story from a while
ago illustrates this point. We lived, at that time, alongside the famous
working water meadows in Salisbury. Our pet polecat (used as an otter
look-alike for lectures I gave at the time) was taken to the meadows to
run loose, so obtain some exercise and stimulation. Putorius, the
polecat, would climb up inside the hollow pollarded willows that dot the
site and flush out the rabbits that lived inside them. Leaping rabbits,
from sometimes two meters up the tree, was certainly not unknown. On one
other occasion we saw Putorius attempting to kill a grass snake, itself
engaged in swallowing a toad (all survived). But the polecat loved
finding and digging into rabbit breeding stops. He would grab a young
rabbit behind its neck and pull it to the surface – where we removed it.
When all the babies had been removed we put them back unharmed, only for
them to be extracted the following day! Presumably the aroma of both
polecat and human did not overly stress the mother, for the babies
survived to maturity.
Never did our polecat kill one of the babies, but it could have been
very different had he not been quite so well fed. Mind you, he was very
reluctant to let go of the last baby from each hole.
Within our garden, young rabbits have been spotted being carried by a
female stoat back to a nearby den in a disused warren. She caught, on
that occasion, about five babies and carried them in her mouth up and
over fences with seeming ease despite the weight of the animals and the
obstacles to be negotiated.
Buzzards regularly soar, or hover, over the garden looking for rabbits,
whilst red kites are becoming commoner too. Hopefully our nesting
tawnies have a liking for rabbit meat too.
Foxes do not feature in the local food chain much, for our local
gamekeeper claims to kill approaching a hundred each year. But he
doesn’t get them all and I’ve occasionally seen adults and young. On one
occasion a female fox was spotted cashing rabbit carcases amongst fallen
leaves. But foxes are not common here and cannot be relied on to control
garden lagomorphs.
Cats! This is yet another ‘hot topic’ for the wildlife gardener.
Yesterday a chunky, wildcat look-alike, trotted across the garden with a
dead young rabbit fixed between its jaws. Good news or bad news*? Well
one less cute baby rabbit, but how many birds to follow? Some figures on
bird kills from domestic cats seem to point to cats being the most
important control point in gardens, but the RSPB is less concerned.
Without the cats the bird population could increase considerably, but
conversely it is sometimes claimed that the cats merely take the
‘excess’ population. But here, at Forest Edge, there are a wealth of
nesting locations that are cat safe, and many wide-open spots to search
for food – so birds appear to have the upper hand.
But, in a garden situation, one less rabbit is not a bad thing.
Should rabbit numbers rise too steeply I do own a live trap which, when
baited during the winter with apple peel, will usually allow some to be
caught and translocated elsewhere. Over fifty have found new homes***.
Myxamatosis occurs here at regular intervals, usually in summer when the
mosquito carrier is common. The characteristic swollen eyes and odd
behaviour make the disease instantly recognisable. The UK has occasional
pet rabbits killed by haemorrhagic disease, but I have never heard of it
(strangely) having an impact in wild populations.
So love ‘em or hate ‘em, rabbits are here to stay and form a critically
important food supply for many wild creatures.
****Our garden rabbits live on the surface and do not warren.
*** It is technically illegal, I think, to release a UK rabbit into the
wild. Mine just always seem to escape when I’m about to kill them!
On a very different topic …. Did you know that rabbits really do dream?
Our last pet rabbit, Charkie, would happily sleep on his back cradled in
one’s arm on the lap. In fact it was highly popular with the cute pet.
But he certainly had his sexy dreams – for he would often sleep-run and
ejaculate in his sleep. A paper tissue strategically located was always
needed! Add that to your animal behaviour catalogue.
david@forest-edge.co.uk
David would love to get an email from you
© David Beeson
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