Norfolk Rabbits and Common Buzzards

I awoke early this morning with alarm bells ringing in my mind as the mental note I made for myself yesterday  suddenly achieved the goal I had set for it -  to remind me to put some wire netting around the transplanted seedlings. It was nearly a day late that my mind remembered, hence my alarm, I had to go and look, had the rabbits had them overnight?

Yesterday in a fit of exasperated enthusiasm after breakfast, having first watered the polytunnel,  I planted out the sweet corn. Standing back and admiring the emerald green shoots in the chilly sunshine I was concerned about their survival, not just in the face of the very chilly spring weather that we are having but also recalling that last year the rabbits had three lots of seedlings, eaten off to the ground before I managed to exclude the pests  from the vegetable garden with sufficient determination for their survival.  After all that trouble it was more than disappointing that later in the year it was rats that moved in and stripped every ear! Another failure.

However, although my memory had not yet kept up with the urgency of erecting another layer of wire netting it turned out that overnight I had escaped the rabbit's attention and the flags of the seedlings were still gently moving in the sunshine and chilly early morning air.

Each year brings fresh enthusiasm and although I used to be plagued by rabbits today they have resumed being a minor nuisance. Several years of close attention and many evenings sitting in the loft of the barn shooting them in the adjacent paddock and vegetable garden made little difference. Life for a rabbit is so very different from our own perspective of the world, in every direction is another predator just waiting for a moment of opportunity to end its life and catch another meal.  It was the work of a few self opinionated 'conservationists' who did a low key release program for reintroduction of the Common Buzzard in East Anglia. Never mind that centuries of management and pest control had successfully removed the buzzard from our part of the world allowing other wildlife to thrive, this self opinionated program was sanctioned without consultation and now we all reap the consequences. The Common Buzzard is now common, as its name suggests, and of course a real difference occurred as they more or less wiped out the abundant population of rabbits that had rebuilt itself over a few decades. Some would call this success, others have a different point of view and priority.

When I started my career at Lakenheath in the Brecks the local country community were the descendants of the warreners, a whole community who had made a living from the rabbit in some of the poorest agricultural land in England, open heath and even sand dunes that blew in the wind.  Indeed Lakenheath airfield is built on what was the main area that the warreners worked, a sandy low hill to the north east of the village, ideal for the burrows and sparse vegetation providing perfect conditions for breeding rabbits. The old warreners effectively farmed this wild resource and in its heyday a train used to go every day to London Smithfield meat market taking many thousands of freshly killed rabbits to sell. They were humble country people making a unique living in conditions where nothing else could grow. Then the Forestry Commission planted a woodland factory of fir trees to form Thetford Chase over vast areas of Breckland. Of course it changed the landscape, ruining perfect hawking country, much used by the Old Hawking Club, the Confederate Hawks and the Champagne Hawking Club. All in the name of progress agriculture developed on the back of intensive irrigation from the underlying syncline aquifer fed by the chalk hills to the south,  transforming worthless soil into a vegetable growing medium to which has to be added all food for plants to grow.  With very low rainfall this semi arid, near desert has to pump all the water the plants will require. Today this artificial cultivation is producing mile upon mile of carrots, parsnips and onions with enormous financial turnover. With the transformation and loss of the warrens today the local villagers are supplemented or replaced in the farming and forestry workforce by immigrants from eastern Europe and South Africa and the economy gives the air of prosperity. Certainly it has all been transformed to a high value economy  fulfilling all of the concept of growth and high finance.

But still the rabbits survive. When we started work on Lakenheath airfield in 1970 rabbit burrows had wrecked the airfield lighting system and in 3 nights we shot more than 1800 within the perimeter fence, we  got very sore shoulders I recall.  In the following weeks we shot many more. Today they are as prolific as ever in these ideal natural conditions and are only kept in check by rigorous crop protection and pest control. And so it has been in the rest of this part of East Anglia. Disease comes and goes, but rabbits adjust and overcome myxomatosis and hemorrhagic virus, vast culling programs, gassing and trapping. The buzzard has success where all else fails. In my paddocks my dogs find empty skins with attached feet and head, what is left after the meal when the soaring buzzard is able to see and catch rabbits that dare expose themselves. A large skin is often where a full grown rabbit has fed the whole family! Foxes, stoats, weasels and mink simply have nowhere the success of the common buzzard.

So this morning Jenny and I erected another wire fence within the existing wire fence that forms the vegetable garden fortress perimeter. Another temporary affair in the ongoing conflict that is the lot of organic gardening.  Trying to cope with mother nature who herself is trying to cope in the face of our onslaught, justified as imposition of our will. But the rabbit survives and then learns to prosper even though it lives in a wholly hostile world, attacked from all directions, almost by every creature around, rarely a moment to simply enjoy the sunshine. I once injured a rabbit that squealed loudly. To my shock a muntjac  arrived from through the hedge and savaged the already injured rabbit until it was dead! They are equipped for the job with tusk like teeth, razor sharp along the edge and are well known for slashing dogs that might venture to tangle. Why would a deer become so fierce, did it feel driven to quiet the rabbit before it attracted predators? The fox, who will often come at a gallop to the sound of a squealing rabbit -  I was amazed but the muntjac  tasted great, as did the rabbit.