CONSERVATION
Modern building projects can displace birds, bees, bats and butterflies. But, as Sally Coulthard has found, there’s lots we can do to welcome wildlife back to our homes
“Right a bit,” my husband shouts from the bottom of a very tall ladder, followed by a wry smile. I’m at the top, knees trembling, trying to fix a barn owl box to the side of our Dutch barn. This wooden box, gloriously crafted by my father, has been designed to lure my favourite birds to nest on the farm. “They’d better bloomin’ like it,”
I grumble under my breath, before one last heave. The barn owl box is finally in position.
One of the ironies of living in the countryside is that our desire to be near nature often drives it away. When we bought our farm in Yorkshire two decades ago, it was derelict. The barns were crumbling, the farmhouse leaked furiously and the fields had been left to grow wild. There was, however, a lot of wildlife. Bats and swifts divebombed the fold yard, hares hid in the long grass and the limestone walls thrummed with the sound of bumblebees, blue tits and house sparrows. It soon became apparent that the more we tidied up the buildings and brought the land back into cultivation, the less hospitable we were being to all the creatures who had made it their home.
IN WITH THE OLD
All the things that wild animals often love about an old building – the crevices, cracks and roof spaces – are the very things we tend to remove or block up when we restore it. New houses suffer the same problem – in making homes more energy efficient, we have inadvertently made them barren spaces for wildlife. There is rich potential for biodiversity, however, in the built environment. In fact, our homes can host a whole menagerie of wildlife. With a few tweaks, both new and existing buildings can easily accommodate animals, who will return our hospitality with not only their graceful presence but good works.
Bees pollinate our green spaces, while bats and birds keep garden and house pests at bay. Swifts, for example, eat as many as 100,000 insects a day, including flying ants and aphids. While we’re tucked up in bed, pipistrelle and horseshoe bats devour midges and mosquitoes. Even the humble house sparrow is a hardworking lodger, clearing away food scraps, spilt grain and flower seeds that would otherwise attract less-welcome guests.
Species that rely on buildings are having a tough time. Barn owls are increasingly struggling for places to roost. Granaries, threshing barns and cart sheds are rapidly being demolished or turned into houses. When these working buildings disappear, the nooks and crannies that swifts and swallows rely on for nesting sites also vanish. In just two decades, numbers of these two species have dropped by between a quarter and half due largely to a lack of places to nest*.
