Here at Hope Pastures we are all great animal lovers and this extents beyond domestic pets to wildlife too.
We count ourselves very lucky to have the opportunity to maintain the land in a wildlife friendly way and also to find ways to actively encourage wildlife so that they can thrive and prosper.
We dont use any pesticides on our fields and we maintain trees and dry stone walls so that they create permanent safe habitats for all types of wildlife.
We have also planted hundreds of new trees and shrubs over the last few years , as well as a garden area with lots of plants that attract butterflies and bees in the summer.
We are lucky to have a volunteer, Jim who feeds the birds all through the winter and this keeps a variety or birds happy, we see a selection of garden birds including

• Wrens
• Robins
• Chaffinches
• Song Thrushes
• Crows

• Goldfinches
• Blue Tits
• Great Tits
• Jackdaws
• Swallows
• Greenfinch

• Longtailed Tits
• Pied Wagtails
• Grey Wagtails
• Wood Pigeons
• Nuthach

• Dunnock
• Woodpeckers
• Magpies
• Blackbirds
• Sparrows
• Jays

Other birds regularly seen are the Swallows which rear several broods of chicks every year, a Lone Pheasant, a pair of Red Kites and more recently a pair of Kestrels who have become quite brave as we often lead the horses right past them within a few feet of where they are perched. We have noticed that these birds of prey have arrived to hunt our resting land where the grass has grown long with a variety of insects and rodents thriving in it.
Mammals regularly seen include Field Voles, Field mice, Moles,Wiesels and Shrews and even Roe Deer in the big horses field and in the woods behind the ponies field.Bats regulary come to feed at dusk on the insects and flies around our manure heap.
Since we began resting sections of our fields using electric fencing we have seen wildflowers flourishing and in turn this has provided the perfect space for Grasshoppers, Ladybirds, Dragonfly,and a huge variety of other insects to live happily.
Further down the ponies fields near the beck there are even Newts living happily.
This encouragement of wildlife on the site is something we plan to continue and we have already purhased several Bat Boxes and Bird Boxes for use on our newly redeveloped outbuildings.

Copyright © 2012 Philip Gawthorpe   The Phyllis Harvey Horse and Donkey Trust        Hosting donated by   http://www.kaleton.com