Scarify

 It's a bit of a cliché that sailors get paid off at the end of a voyage and immediately go On The Town until the wages invisibly accumulated over months have been spaffed up the wall in various bars, barbers and  bordellos. My Dad was a sailor between the ages of 15 and 50. Although better paid and better educated than Peter Russett, Sam Small and Ginger Dick he nevertheless wasn't really safe to go shopping on his own when ashore. One Saturday, when he was home from sea and we were home from school, he returned with a wheeled gizmo for punching holes in the lawn to 'aerate the soil'. His teenage offspring gave him a good ribbing for his foolishness. But at least one of them derived simple-minded pleasure from racing up and down the grass pushing this machine in front of me making an agreeably clattery racket.

Years later, found out, like M. Jourdain and prose, that I had been scarifying the grass with a . . . scarifier. This all came flooding back to me because, for the third Autumn on the trot, our Traditional Hay Meadows have been scarified by wild animals. 

Should all be pale green on the flat, darker in the hedges. In 2023 we blamed rutting deer. Although other people pointed the finger at rabbits and badgers. It is becoming clearer now that corvids [Corvus spp. crows etc.] are involved in the damage even if they are not the primum mobile. For sure, when I come round through a field gate to count sheep (as I do several times a day), it is common to disturb a great cawwwing flock from their depredations activity. The crows disperse to the field bounding trees and return to work 5 minutes after I disappear from sight. It looks like a third of the grass and forbs of each field have been scrorched up and turned into micro-hay. 

It's pretty clear now that the exposed earth has been secondarily treated by rabbits, who tend to turn over clods and turves rather than just scratch out the grass. On one level, it is a PITA because we've paid good money to have fields which sustain a flock of sheep. On the other hand, it is a vindication of the low input, organic, pesticide feed traditional hay meadow into which we have been leaning these last 25 years. There is something in the top-soil of our fields that acts as a honey-pot form crows (and presumably other bird species). None of the neighbouring properties have sustained similar damage.

There is no point in tearing my beard about this. I could:

• Install scarecrows
• Spend my retirement patrolling the fields during daylight hours
• Shoot the feckers
• Poison all users
• Get an active yappy-dog that walks quietly past the sheep but runs all shouty at birds
• and convince the sheep that they should ignore that dog

None of which are within my competence or inclinations. It's surely better, as we can afford the loss, to allow 'nature' to have her portion here. See light pollution earlier.