If Tosca could talk I think she would tell me how sick she is of me bringing new animals into the garden. How much she hates the foxes, how annoying the squirrels are, how those stinky little spiky things are the bane of her life and how dare I make homes for them and feed them. How the newest spiky thing is sleeping under the pallet that the compost bin sits on.
‘I’ve had enough,’ say her eyes. ‘I’ve had enough but you should know the thing you think is in the box is not in the box. It’s here.’
I get on my hands and knees and use a torch to look under the pallet, and sure enough there’s Tiny, fast asleep. It’s a mild, dry day so I’m not overly concerned he’s curled up with no bedding, but it’s no place, really, for a hedgehog. I thank Tos but lock her inside and retrieve a sturdy plant pot and fresh straw from the shed – if Tiny decides to make this his den he must at least have the means to make it comfortable. I set up the trail camera in front of the compost bin and head inside.
Tiny is free now, and he’s a wild animal. If he wants to sleep under a pallet he’s perfectly within his rights to do so. There are some rescue centres that insist on a so-called ‘soft release’, whereby you release the hog into a box within a cage (I have a rabbit run), so they can familiarise themselves with their surroundings for a few days before going into the wide world proper. I have done this before, but prefer not to, and most rescues these days choose to just let them go. There are studies that suggest this method is less stressful, at least for the hog, although not the human watching them having a party through a window.
I wonder if a soft release would have been better for Tiny as it would have stopped his excited wanderings, but it’s too late now. He’s not where I intended him to be but he’s wild and he’s asleep during the day, as hedgehogs should be. This is enough. He weighs 700g and will no doubt find the dish of kitten biscuits on his adventures around the garden tonight. He’s a young, excitable thing, he’ll be OK.
Later, I check the trail camera and it tells me Tiny continued his adventures. He woke from his slumber beneath the pallet and headed back to the box (no, not the one I prepared for him). He found the kitten biscuits. Over the next few days, I see that he is using the garden as his base but adventuring down the alley and hopefully into other gardens. This is good news, he’s settled in well.
Emma comes home, shouting, ‘Where are you? I have something to tell you!’
I head downstairs and she tells me she’s just bumped into our dog-walking friend Vicki, whose kids Stan and Minnie have just seen a hedgehog in the park.
‘They thought you should know,’ she says.
It’s dusk. ‘When did they see it?’ I ask.
‘Just now.’
‘What was it doing?’
‘It was sitting beneath the zip wire in the children’s play area,’ she replies. ‘Are you not excited? They saw a hedgehog and thought to tell you!’
But it’s dusk, which is neither day nor night. And it’s autumn, which is when food starts to become scarce. And it was… sitting beneath the zip wire? A hedgehog out during the day at this time of year is in trouble. A hedgehog just sitting there is… odd. It’s Friday. We have beers and a takeaway to order, catching up to do. I find a box and a pair of gloves and head out into the night.
I enter the play area and walk around with my box. There are teenagers and dog walkers in the distance, but no one I could ask about the whereabouts of a hungry hedgehog. It’s no longer beneath the zip wire. It’s not in the play area at all, and it’s too dark to go venturing into the wooded area. I search the whole park and find nothing. I go home and post in my hedgehog group: ‘Please look out for any hedgehogs out during the day or at dusk.’ I open beer, I order a takeaway, I have my Friday.
The next day I bump into Stan and Minnie, who tell me it was not only sitting beneath the zip wire but that it had its nose in a packet of crisps.
‘How big was it?’ I ask.
‘Small,’ says Stan.
‘Medium,’ says Minnie.
‘And it was eating crisps?’
‘Skips! Do hedgehogs eat Skips then?’
‘Erm…’
I ask them to keep an eye out when they’re next in the children’s play area, and I spend the next few evenings patrolling the park with Tosca. If anyone knows where a hedgehog is, it’s Tosca. It’s probably fine, dusk is dusk and many hogs do come out as soon as night falls. I just worry about the small ones, and the ones that feel the need to nose through a packet of Skips. I’m worried it might be my excitable little Tiny.
I wake early and take Tos to our favourite patch of the Downs. By the end of the road she knows where she’s going; we’ve walked past the park and we haven’t crossed to go up to the beach. As soon as she knows where she’s going she tries to drag me there, as if I don’t also know where we’re headed.
‘Tosca!’ We fight our way to the first patch of green space.
I let her off the lead when we get to the playing field at the supermarket, and throw treats into the leaf litter. She sniffs in circles, then zones in on the scent with zig zags, her snout working overtime, close to the ground. When she gets really close she snuffles like a pig until she finds her quarry – the tiniest plant-based ‘W’ – and snaffles it up.
The path is gorgeous at this time of year. At some point someone planted masses of broad-leaved cockspur (Crataegus prunifolia) and their bright red berries shine like beacons against bright yellow foliage. I laugh at pigeons gobbling them up and marvel at the beauty of what is, essentially, municipal planting at the edge of a supermarket car park. There’s a chiffchaff hweet-hweeting in every tree, the occasional chak-chak-chak of fieldfares. A cold blue sky. It’s all so beautiful.
The berry-laden path takes us round the back of the supermarket, to a patch of scrub known as Benfield Valley that’s at risk of ‘development’. This smallish patch of land used to belong to the supermarket chain but was, ironically, gifted to the council on the proviso that it would be for the community to enjoy indefinitely. Word on the street says one of the previous councils sold the land lease to a property developer, and now planning permission has been granted for a new housing estate. I wonder if some of the same councillors who sold the land are now fighting to save it, either trying to make up for what they’ve done or knowing the quest is futile but using the debate to score points against the opposition? Politics is a dirty game.
This bit of land gifted to the community was probably a bit underwhelming initially. But over the years, trees have grown – mainly hawthorns, ash and sallows, complementing thickets of long grass and banks of thistles, teasels and other wildflowers. In spring we walk among clouds of hawthorn blossom and now, of course, there are berries. There’s a song thrush here that sings his heart out from the top of a tree. There are chiffchaffs and whitethroats in summer.This little patch of land behind a supermarket is actually an important stop-off for migrating birds as they hit land after journeying here from Africa – a stepping stone to wilder parts. I don’t come here at night but it’s the perfect scrubby habitat for hedgehogs to make a home, for bats and dormice and other endangered species to carve out an existence in an otherwise completely urban setting. Bookended as it is by the Old Shoreham Road and the A27, with the slip road from one to the other running to one side, I find it amazing that so much lives here. Traffic roars while the song thrush sings. Lorries thunder while butterflies feed. Dogs play here, people see nature they would otherwise have to travel to find. Isn’t that worth something? And yet most people, and most councils, view scrub as wasteland, comprising thickets or ‘bushes’ in a great tangled mess. Ancient woodland it ain’t, nor does it have the time-honoured romanticism of a wildflower meadow. But it’s absolutely brilliant for wildlife. It’s a rare and much undervalued habitat, certainly the only bit I know of within walking distance of my house. Scientists suggest more than 450 rare and threatened species of plant, insect and bird are associated with scrub, although it’s unlikely that many of them will be here. But there are plenty of the commoner things. Commoner things that have been squeezed out of the city because they need a wilder land. And all of them, all of them, will be bulldozed.
Residents have formed a group to try to stop the development. They’ve organised litter picks and nature days to show the world how much they care about this little patch of scrub, organised protests and walks with MPs and councillors. Some councillors have voted to build on it without ever having seen it, without knowing its value to people and wildlife. It’s a green lung of the city, it’s a rare and precious habitat. Yet, apparently, it’s not even worth looking at before signing it away.
I joined the group for a protest outside the town hall when the council was making its final decision on whether or not to build on it. Around 50 people turned up, all with banners depicting butterflies and bees, birds, green space, nature. We spoke to councillors as they entered the building, begged them not to sign our scrub away. ‘There are nicer places,’ said one. ‘There are nicer places than Benfield Valley.’
Brighton is a growing city with a small amount of land to grow into – we can’t build on the Downs. So small green spaces, which mean so much to its residents, are constantly under threat. We need to build more houses, say the councillors, and they must go somewhere. Yet a report sent to the council showed that some 3,000 properties across the city were unoccupied, with a large proportion used as second homes or Airbnbs, while a government report suggests that one in every 37 homes across Brighton and Hove lies empty. But, sure, we need to bulldoze homes for wildlife to build more houses for people, who may or may not actually live in them. Sure we do.
We cross the road, before starting the climb into the Downs proper. I tune in, instantly, to yellowhammers and corn buntings as the sound of cars, of humans, fades. We climb further, up a steep path at the edge of a field of corn stubble, skylarks yo-yo-ing through the autumn sky.
We have perfected this walk to avoid golf courses (Tosca is scared of golf buggies) and farm animals (Tosca is scared of cows and sheep). We stick to the path, always. We reach the top of the hill where, for less than a mile, we hear no traffic at all. I relax into the sound of the countryside, of birds and wind and the crunching of chalk underfoot. Little pants from the dog. I stop to look at yellowhammers through my binoculars and she woofs impatiently. ‘Stop your whingeing,’ I reply. I am happy here. Sometimes my peace is ruined by golfers, lawnmowers and young lads racing around on quad bikes, but not today. It’s just us and the birds today. Us and the birds and the fungi and the berries and occasionally other dogs, some of which Tosca is also scared of.
We loop back, past Benfield Hill Nature Reserve, past golf courses and back over the A27, down to threatened land and back through the supermarket car park. The roads and car dealerships are still here, the traffic louder now it’s later. I wonder will we ever stop building? Will we ever learn? The fight to save Benfield isn’t quite over yet and the dog and I will continue our walks there. But this land is tainted, there’s an air of lost hope. At home I check the hedgehog bowl to see if the biscuits have been taken. I hope the new residents of Benfield Valley housing estate will do the same.
Batman hoverfly, Myathropa florea
Myathropa florea is known as the Batman hoverfly because it has a mark on its thorax that looks like the Batman logo. It’s a common species, flying from May to October, and is often found in gardens, where it hangs around compost bins and drains, or the stinky comfrey solution you’re making as an organic liquid feed for your tomatoes. I think it’s beautiful, all fresh yellow abdominal bands with black anchor-like markings, a yellow face and its whole body is covered in fine yellow hairs. It has quite a high-pitched buzz and always joins me when I open the compost heap or turn my organic comfrey solution. Why? Because it wants to make more Batman hoverflies.
