Wildlife at The Woodhouse Farm

Not all the wildlife in Herefordshire has four legs and a loud moo or baa.

We have planted nearly one thousand trees on The Woodhouse Farm and have been rewarded by a significant increase in the numbers of wildlife which live here and visit. Badgers and foxes live locally, as our two remaining hens will testify and we once saw a mink on the banks of the moat. This laps at the foot of one of the gables of The Woodhouse and is full of mirror carp which attract a heron that waits patiently in the hope of making a meal and often visits several times a day. Other birds we have seen include green and great spotted woodpeckers, wild mallard and the occasional kingfisher, while residents include a pair of moorfowl which try to rear at least two families every year, magpies permitting. One of the sights we love best on a Summer evening is to see the swallows or swifts (we’re not sure which they are!) swooping down over the pond to scoop up water. There are great tits, blue tits, coal tits and long-tailed tits, wrens, dunnocks and robins, chiff chaffs, greenfinches, chaffinches, bullfinches and goldfinches. House sparrows and blue tits actually nest in the walls of Barn Croft and we have a pair of buzzards nesting in one of our trees. Pied wagtails can be seen bobbing up and down across the grass and nest in a workshop at the back of the property. In Spring we still hear cuckoos and we have heard larks, though not so much recently, and song thrushes. In Autumn, field fares appear in flocks to eat all the hawthorn berries. Yellow buntings and, once, a corn bunting have been seen and a nuthatch some years ago.

Field mice and voles share the grounds and the garden, providing meals for various birds of prey. Apart from the common buzzard, we have seen kestrels, sparrow hawks, barn owls and little owls. The pond and garden plants attract many varieties of insect including several different types of dragonfly. In their turn they provide food for the pipistrelle and brown long-eared bats which are frequently seen at twilight in search of nocturnal prey.