Hedge Fund.

When it comes to our autumn harvest for our birds there can`t be a richer picking than our hedgerows. In the U.K we are lucky to have masses of them. If you were to line them all end to end they would stretch twenty times around the planet. They are a very rich habitat, replicating a woodland edge they can contain as many as six hundred different species of plants and trees.Many of which produce fruit and berries. During the winter time, birds would do best by eating seeds and insects. The problem is they have to find them and handle them. But berries occur in vast numbers and are easy to spot. In one square metre of hawthorn hedge there can be up to ten thousand berries. Its the bright red against the green background that makes them easy for the birds to spot. They get lots of energy from berries, one hundred grams of blackberries equals fifty calories, one hundred grams of elderberries equals seventy calories and there are as many calories in ivy berries as are in a decent sized chocolate bar. So that's what the birds get out of the hedgerow, but what about the plants? They are demonstrating a fantastic example of co-evolution. These plants have put energy and resources into producing the berries. They have invested so in return the seeds get dispersed, the birds eat the berries and then digest them but not the seed inside. They then fly many miles, the seed then passes through them to germinate somewhere else, not in competition with the parent plant. The seed then colonises another area. Zoochory is what this is called. So if any farmers read my blog, its so important for our hedgerows to be left in the autumn for the birds. Eighty% of our farmland birds rely on our hedgerows for food and for shelter and nesting. If we cut the hedges to early the plants will not be able to establish a longer growth pattern, meaning they will not be able to produce the fruit that is so vital for our farmland birds in autumn.