GARDEN REWILDERS

As a long-term owner of both cats and dogs I’m sometimes asked which of them I’d choose if I could only have one. That’s a tough call. Yet there is one animal that, above all others, I wouldn’t want to be without.

Chickens were a feature of my childhood. We had a small mixed flock of hens and (contrary to the usual advice) several cockerels which were free to roam the garden, often disappearing for hours at a time into neighbouring fields and gardens. My sister and I each got to name our own cockerel. Mine was ‘Scruffy’, hers ‘Hawkeye’. She had the best name but I had the best cockerel. There was the odd mishap with the local Foxes and neighbouring dogs but our small flock remained more or less intact over many years and even came with us when we moved from Cheshire down to Oxfordshire. They appear in old family photos, mostly as casual interlopers in the background, but occasionally held up to the camera with pride.

It took over two decades of adult life before I rekindled the connection. But when we first moved into a house that had a sufficiently large garden, set back far enough from the road, we finally took on a flock of our own. We thought this would be a big undertaking at first, but it was remarkably easy to get started. Our local garden centre stocked point-of-lay hens and we ordered a pre-built mini henhouse. Other than that, all we needed was one sack of corn, one of layers pellets, and wood-shavings for the henhouse. Everything clicked into place with a few minutes of online shopping.

Once installed, the hens almost looked after themselves. Somehow, they knew to roost inside the house.

The helpful role of hens as garden rewilders dawned on us gradually, by coincidence over roughly the same period as the word ‘rewilding’ came into regular use. I now think of hens as the miniature garden equivalent of the cattle or ponies used to help manage many nature reserves. Cattle graze the vegetation, keeping down the otherwise dominant grasses so that a wider diversity of wild flowers get a chance. On a much smaller scale, chickens perform a similar role. They keep unmown, wild areas of the garden in check, partly by eating the grass, but mainly with their distinctive approach to foraging. They rake vigorously at the vegetation with their powerful feet to uncover tasty morsels of food - a beetle larva perhaps, or an earthworm if the soil itself is exposed. And they can be encouraged to focus on a particular area though the judicious scattering of corn. This helps reduce the dominance of fast-growing grasses, breaks open the structure of rank vegetation, and creates little patches of bare ground where other plants have a chance to become established.

Where the grass is very thick, the dog sometimes helps out by digging through to the soil below, in her never-ending quest for small mammals.

On a sloping bank in our Devon garden, the thicker grass has gradually been scraped and scratched away. Long-dormant seeds have been brought to the surface and light floods onto the ground. We now enjoy early summer flushes of pink Common Centaury, orangey-red Scarlet Pimpernel and bright yellow Bird’s-foot- trefoil, instead of uninspiring uniform grass. The bare patches also provide habitat for invertebrates. Beetles and spiders scuttle across the surface, and solitary bees burrow into it, taking advantage of the warmth of full sunlight.

Is there a downside to hosting hens in a wildlife garden? Well, possibly, though much depends on your philosophy towards wildlife and how flexible and tolerant you are prepared to be. Hens will certainly eat some of the creatures we find desirable as well as those that are more often considered as pests. They are partial to earthworms, but they struggle to access them and therefore don’t take very many. They eat small slugs and snails too, which can be seen as a good thing if they are devouring your vegetables, but not so good if you value them as food for garden birds and Hedgehogs.

Some acts of predation are harder to forgive. Hens that find a Frog or Toad become instantly merciless. Fearing they may lose such a large food item to rivals in the flock, they peck away relentlessly, reducing the prey to bite-sized pieces in short order. This is especially frustrating when they come across a Toad, because they don’t eat it, presumably because of the distasteful skin. Small mammals suffer a similar fate when their nests are occasionally discovered under the thatch of old dead grass. Even young birds can become victims if they fledge too soon and are ambushed on the ground, a fate that once befell a young Chaffinch as we watched on, helpless, from an upstairs window.

Our response to these incidents has been to improve the habitat in the garden so that our Frogs, Toads and other animals have more places to hide themselves away from patrolling hens. More bushes have been established, and piles of brash and logs have been added to corners. We’ve found that old railway sleepers are especially favoured by Toads, and we often notice one using the same spot beneath a sleeper for several weeks, resting in safety by day and no doubt emerging to roam the garden at night when the hens (and other predators) pose no threat. Indirectly, then, our chickens have helped to promote further improvement in the garden’s wildlife through the mitigation we’ve provided.

Brown Rats have proved to be an almost constant irritation when we’ve kept hens. They seem to home in on gardens with chickens, no doubt taking advantage of any surplus food. They’ve had the audacity to burrow directly underneath our henhouse, throwing out small mounds of black earth all around the edges. Reactions to this species depend on your philosophy. They could be considered a welcome new addition to the garden fauna - but more often they are seen as disease-ridden pests to be eradicated at all costs. I try to nudge myself towards the former view, though if numbers become excessive, or if one Rat manages to find its way into the main house, my resolve is sorely tested.

Hens have much more to offer than just help with rewilding. There are the eggs, of course, and the pleasure that comes from being able to eat fresh, sustainable produce rather than the factory-farmed equivalents with their disconcerting red stamps. There is also a strange but powerful therapy that comes from having hens in the garden. It’s tricky to articulate, and it took us by surprise at first, but there is something remarkably calming about watching hens. There is the slow, methodical foraging as they rake at the ground and peer down hopefully to see if anything edible has been revealed.

As well as being relaxing to watch, there are the restorative benefits of high comedy. A few days ago I watched as two hens locked eyes on the same crane-fly at the same time, before careering chaotically after it, zig-zagging across the ground, propelled by a blur of stunted wings. In the end they were both left frustrated, tilting their gaze wistfully towards the sky as it rose up and away to safety. Grasshoppers on the patio and in the flowerbeds lead to similar pursuits, with frenetic stop-start chases as the prey lands in cover, only to be flushed once again as the attacker homes in.

Adding a cockerel to the mix provides another dimension to flock-watching. They have a distinct air of authority, even arrogance, about them as they oversee their harem. We bought one recently and introduced him to our hens. He was cautious at first but now he struts purposefully around the fringes of the group, keeping an eye on things and, naturally, taking the oppor­tunity to mate when the moment is right, and sometimes when it isn’t. But he has a nurturing side too. He indicates the presence of food to the hens by pecking loosely at it and making an endearing, gentle clucking noise - a way of saying that he is happy to forgo it for the sake of the others. He is clearly keen to ensure that the potential mothers of his offspring are kept safe and in good condition.

A cockerel will also maintain vigilance for potential predators, sounding a distinctive low screeching alarm to alert the hens. The local Buzzards regularly elicit a reaction as they pass low overhead.

Based on the evidence of the last few weeks, a cockerel can also help to keep stray Pheasants away from the garden. In previous winters they have arrived in numbers after the start of the shooting season, eating the hen food and jumping up onto the bird table, clearing it within seconds. Only the other day, I saw the cockerel vigorously chase a cock Pheasant away from the hen feeder - and it has yet to return. So far, the anticipated mass arrival of hen Pheasants has been held at bay. They wander about in the adjoining fields but seem reluctant to come through the fence.

The frequent bouts of territorial crowing are a real pleasure or a major source of irritation, depending on your mindset. Most chicken keepers hold it up as one of the finest and most evocative sounds of our countryside, but near neighbours will not necessarily agree. After loud music, yapping dogs and compulsive DIY, crowing cockerels are probably next on the list for neighbour disputes about noise. Thankfully, we live far enough away from our neighbours that this is not a problem.

Hen therapy comes with a health warning, however. If you’re going to keep chickens, a certain amount of stoicism and tolerance is called for. We have lost part, or all, of our flock to the local Foxes on several occasions. Sometimes carelessness has cost us. A gap in the garden fence unplugged for one day too long, or a henhouse door inadvertently left open overnight. On other occasions there was nothing much we could have done. The garden of our current house is impossible to fence securely. One morning last year, I looked out of the window to find my gaze met by a Fox. It lifted its head to stare back at me from the far edge of the drive. It was panting vigorously and had, a moment before, been eyeing up a lone white hen. I went out to chase it away and began to piece together what must have happened. Our flock of four (already two down from its peak) was now a flock of one. Trails of bloodied feathers led away into an adjacent field. The panting now made sense. The Fox was out of breath because it had just killed, carried away and then stashed the other three birds before coming back for a final time. The result was even more dispiriting than a total absence of hens: a single, sorry survivor, clucking forlornly, witness to unspeakable events and no doubt fearing that worse was to come.

A few months after we had restocked, we returned from a walk to find a worrying puff of white feathers on the lawn and an apparent absence of hens. The signs were ominous. After a search of the garden, we tracked two of them down to the henhouse, hunched miserably on a perch towards the back. At least there were survivors. A few minutes later we found the rest of the flock, tucked away under cover of the thick hedge that flanks the drive, and requiring a lot of persuasion to come out. We put it down to a lucky escape from a Fox attack, and kept a wary eye out the following day. It was then, as I was scanning the garden and nearby field for Foxes that I noticed a Buzzard overhead - high at first but dropping lower and turning in ever tighter circles as it drifted closer to the house. The hens saw it too, and rather than keeping a wary eye on it, which is their typical response, they ran for the hedge in panic. It must, I’m sure, have been a Buzzard that attacked them the previous day, the stray feathers on the grass suggesting it had come close to making a kill.

It would be easy to become frustrated by these events, especially if your children have lovingly named their favourite hen. But I try to see such things as an essential part of living in a landscape that is still rich enough to support wild animals, even those that can occasionally cause problems. I’m happy to accept that the Fox has young to feed and a rightful place in our countryside. Away from the garden, it’s an animal I love to see. We always pause before each restocking, fearing that the same thing will happen again. But, after a short gap, we submit to the inevitable. I wouldn’t want to live for long without a band of garden hens, for their help with the gardening, the calming atmosphere they bring and (stoicism to the fore) the way they help reconnect us to the wider landscape.

Postscript

Ironically enough, the greatest gift from our latest batch of hens came after they were gone. Following a long period without a Fox sighting, the old problem resurfaced. Once again, we acquired a resident Fox close to the garden, probably a young animal born in the spring trying to find its way in the world. And it had struck gold. Our twelve-strong flock of hens was too great a temptation, and individuals were being picked off one by one. The long grass of the rewilded lawn offered thick cover so the hunter could slip unseen to within striking range. The cockerel did his best, calling frantically (once, memorably, intruding on a podcast) and charging towards danger when a hen had been caught, but he was as powerless as we were. Before long we were down to six hens and felt obliged to pen the survivors out of harm’s way. For a few days we watched as they paced miserably up and down their new boundary trying to fathom a way out, and then we relented and gave them to a neighbour. She had the space (and a regime of Fox control) to allow them to roam safely.

A few weeks later in mid-September I glanced out of the window and a blob on top of one of the fenceposts caught my eye. As any birder will tell you, some blobs seen at a distance invite close scrutiny, for reasons that defy logical explanation; intuitively, I felt this might be something good. I grabbed the binoculars from the kitchen and pulled the fencepost into sharp focus. Such was my shock that it took a full minute or so for a bird that is impossible to misidentify to resolve itself into... yes there could be no doubt. into a Wryneck. It sat there on its post for a while and then flopped down into the grass and out of sight.

Over the next few days I watched it regularly, sometimes on the fence but more often foraging along the bank nearby at the edge of the drive. This was an area much favoured by the hens in their relentless quest for invertebrates. They helped keep the base of the bank open by raking at the vegetation, providing plenty of bare ground among the weeds on this warm, south­facing slope. With the hens gone it offered the perfect place for a stray Wryneck to feed up before the next leg of its journey south.

This is the most unexpected bird visitor I can recall finding in any garden. It’s impossible to know whether it would have turned up and been tempted to stay even if we hadn’t kept hens. But I prefer to believe not.