Meet the animals that live in our Victorian woodland in our latest post! Dr. Orton explores the history of Leicestershire’s landscape, explains how fox and game hunting shaped our ecology and argues for the importance of our fox coverts and spinneys.
Leicestershire is known for foxes. Motorists entering the county are welcomed by a sign bearing the fox emblem and a fox runs beneath the cinquefoil on the county’s red and white flag. Leicester City football club is known as the Foxes, as is Leicestershire’s cricket team.
This association comes from Leicestershire’s history of fox hunting – a history that has shaped our landscape into what we see today.
Fox Coverts
The eighteenth century saw a rise in fox hunting but a decline in woodlands. The enclosure of commons – hedging or fencing off land for farming - reduced natural gorse patches, which meant less natural cover for fox habitat.
A fox covert (pronounced “cover”) is a wooded area planted to provide habitat for foxes in the era of fox hunting. Farmers in the midlands were paid rent by the hunt to plant new coverts or enclose existing ones. Canonical landscape historian W. G. Hoskins points out that these new these new coverts are distinguishable from ancient woodland today by their small size and geometrical shape.
Jane Bevan argues that eighteenth-century foxhunters preferred open fields, rather than enclosed ones, but that the East Midlands became more important for hunting in the early nineteenth century.
Fox coverts were largely created in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. This was done either by enclosing existing rough ground or by planting new habitat from scratch.
Individual landowners decided what to plant. Gorse was a popular choice, as it provides cover for both foxes and their prey, rabbits. Trees eventually took over if these were not managed. Otherwise, blackthorn or other thorn trees were a popular choice in the midlands.
Sometimes fox hunters built artificial earths in the fox coverts, which would both increase the supply of foxes, and be a location where foxes could be flushed out on a slow hunting day. Another approach was to block the entrances of the earth so the fox was forced to remain in open country ahead of the hunt the next day.
All this made Leicestershire perfect for fox hunting: it lacked large woods in which foxes could hide, but had a lot of small coverts from which the fox could break and provide a chase across the fields.
Spinneys for Game
We have a patch of established woodland we call the Spinney. This is a small area of trees, like a copse (a small wood, traditionally managed as a coppice), but created and managed for hunting game. The name means “wood of thorns,” from the Medieval Latin spinetum, from spina, thorn.
Jonathan Finch says that the name “spinney” usually referred to a small covert of less than 10 acres, whereas “gorse” or “covert” was most commonly attached to purpose-made coverts of between 10 and 30 acres.
Our spinney is actually a Victorian creation, originally planted in the shape of a bottle. The idea was that game birds would be bred there, then disturbed by “beaters” walking towards the narrow end. This would disturb the game so that the gentry could shoot them when they came into the open.
Today, though, our spinney is a haven for foxes and other wildlife.
Wildlife in our Spinney
We are big fans of foxes at Orton Academy and Research and fox hunts were strictly banned from our land, even when the sport was legal in the UK. Today, we maintain the spinney as a wildlife sanctuary.
As E. Adrian Woodruffe-Peacock points out, the selection of species that landowners used for fox coverts and game may not be the ones we would use today. We’ve found that trees that are suitable to the area have established and self-seeded, so now we have a flourishing habitat.
We have a solid mix of holly, hawthorn, elder, willow, crab apple, maple, silver birch and cherry, along with some well-established oak trees. We’ve added other trees into the mix, including yew, hazel, rowan and more wild cherry, willow and silver birch. We’ve also added dogwood and spindle to ensure that the canopy has varying heights.
We try to stick to native species to protect the character of the spinney and also to provide the best environment for specialist species that have evolved close relationships with these trees.
There are a few non-native conifers along the edge of the spinney, though, which we’ve chosen to keep. These do provide habitat for British wildlife and we would be reluctant to fell established trees.
At ground level, we have a mix of foxglove, lords-and-ladies, common chickweed, broad buckler-fern, nipplewort, male-fern, herb Robert and herb Bennet. In the winter, we will get snowdrops, and in the spring, the ground is covered with bluebells.
The spinney also provides habitat for some of our favourite native animals: badgers, tawny owls, and, of course, foxes. Click the links to read about the nocturnal animals that live in the woods and meet our resident tawny owls!
Other bird life includes buzzards, jays, robins, blackbirds, song thrushes, blue tits, gold crests, pigeons, wrens, great tits, chaffinches, greenfinches and chiffchaffs.
We also have animals that are not native to the UK, but have been introduced. Rabbits were introduced by the Normans and we have plenty of them!
Pheasants are native to Asia, but the Romans introduced the Caucasian subspecies to Europe; perhaps also to Britain. We have historical evidence that they were here in the eleventh century and the Normans popularised the pheasant as a gamebird. Pheasants declined in the early 17th century due to woodland clearance and the drainage of marshes. In the 18th century, new re-introductions were made of the Chinese ring-necked pheasant; now Caucasian pheasants are very rare.
The number of pheasants in the UK varies throughout the year (depending on the shooting season) and most are released for shooting, although a small number have become naturalised. Large pheasant releases can have negative impacts on the environment, but there are lots of positives that come from managing the environment for game. Generalist predators like foxes have certainly benefitted from pheasant releases.
Chinese muntjacs were introduced to Woburn Park in Bedfordshire in the early twentieth century and are now common across southeast England. They’ve spread to the midlands and we often have them passing through the spinney.
Muntjacs do impact British woodland and some areas of the UK have experienced damage due to heavy grazing from muntjacs. We’ve not noticed any problems, although we often get muntjacs browsing in the trees.
Grey squirrels were first introduced to England from North America in 1876 as an ornamental species in the grounds of stately homes, but by 1930 it was recognised that these animals are harmful to our native wildlife. In particular, our native red squirrel has suffered due to the introduction of the grey squirrel.
Our Local Heritage
Leicestershire’s countryside today retains its characteristic hedged fields and small, regularly spaced copses and woodland. Many of these small patches of woodland are game spinneys and fox coverts.
As Jonathan Finch points out, “Established and managed woodlands are widely recognized and highly prized as playing a major role in sustaining biodiversity, but fox coverts are rarely considered in the same category. However…a greater diversity of ground flora and fauna was noted within fox coverts than was found in nonmanaged woodland.”
He’s right: there is a lot of snobbery when it comes to assessing the value of different wildlife habitats in Britain. I think this is a mistake.
We have to accept that the landscape we see around us is not as it was when humans came to Britain; it is not even as it was just a few hundred years ago. But we do have historic, ecologically rich habitats that can support our wildlife.
Fox coverts and game spinneys are a hugely underrated part of this. They can join up wildlife corridors like hedgerows, linking habitats and reducing the isolation of populations.
These habitats are also an important part of our cultural heritage. They were created by social forces in an era in which our landscape was rapidly changing. We have preserved and protected them; today, they pay us back by protecting our own wildlife.
They are a part of our story.
Find Out More
If you’re interested in conservation and wildlife, we have a blog series on British wildlife and a series on the people and wildlife of South Asia, from the altitudes of the Himalayas to the dense mangrove forests of Bangladesh!
We also offer online private tuition in our interdisciplinary course, Culture and Conservation, in which you can explore the links between our natural and cultural heritage and study wildlife and cultures from across the world! This is a template of a possible study route and can be combined, adapted, or designed from scratch to suit your interests and goals.
Dr. Orton will work with you to design a course of private tutorials tailored to your needs, ability and schedule. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to find out more!
Do More
For those who would like to take action to preserve our wild spaces, there’s plenty you can do. If you're lucky enough to have some land, you could plant a wood from scratch (click the link to read about how we are planting our own native woodland). Even if you don’t have a big garden, there are plenty of things you can do to help biodiversity in your area. Why not put up a solitary bee nesting box or insect home, create a woodpile as a habitat for small creatures or leave small areas of your garden to go wild?
Think about your own area and how you can protect vulnerable but important parts of your own environment. You might even want to start your own project investigating the cultural importance of wildlife in your area. Dr. Orton works with independent scholars undertaking their own research for an independent project, people writing a book or simply those who have a personal interest. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to get started!
Reach Out
We’d love to see what you’re doing to help wildlife in your area. Follow the Conservation highlight reel on the Orton Academy Instagram to see what we’re getting up to and tag us in to any snaps you put up!
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