Friday 23 August 2024

Thoughts On The Fen

 Lets say this straight away....


....most of the fens are not what the majority of people would consider beautiful. Big flat fields are farmed in the modern way with little space for nature. If the electricity company want to put up a line of pylons then no one will object, certainly not on grounds of desecrating a visually appealing landscape. And there are miles of landscape like the scene above.


When I was at school Cornelius Vermuyden and those who drained these wetlands were considered heroes of a sort; draining the peat and opening up these unproductive marshes for agriculture. Now it's beginning to look like a huge mistake. The peat dried out and within a couple of centuries simply blew away in the wind, till now there's barely enough good soil in many places to support arable farming.



The area in the above photo is called Adventurers' Fen, land which was given to those who "adventured" the capital which made the vast drainage scheme a possibility. Now it belongs to the National Trust and is the scene of a new "adventure" as they attempt to return it to something like its original state.



If they succeed - and the early signs are that they will - then agriculture's loss will be nature's gain. The level of success will depend on the size of the area which can be reclaimed and the various conservation bodies are thinking big. 



Although I'm in a hopelessly outnumbered minority I find these reclaimed areas are very beautiful (though I even find the square fields and straight concrete roads of the farmland hold an inexplicable attraction to me).



Of course, beauty itself is a slippery concept, varying not only from person to person but also over time. Before Wordsworth and the other Lakeland poets had their say the mountains of Cumbria were usually described as "horrid", which meant places to be feared and avoided. But their poems opened our eyes to their delights. Wordsworth himself wrote fierce letters complaining about the new fad for painting cottages white, much preferring the colour of the natural stone. Now everyone loves the little white farmsteads dotted over the green hills.



Wordsworth's rhyming led indirectly to our upland regions becoming National Parks while the lower, flatter lands were ignored till the recent designation of the New Forest and Norfolk Broads.



If an area's importance for wildlife was being considered rather than the scenic ideals of the Romantic movement then mudflats, estuaries, woodlands and reedbeds might be higher on the list of landscapes worth preserving. We seem to be slowly coming around to this way of thinking though it's rare indeed to see anyone out photographing or sketching around here, unless they are photographing birds through a long lens.



Government agencies also seem to have an ambivalent strategy towards these lowland areas; they agree to the protection of relatively small areas, while seeing little scenic or natural value in the rest of it. Scenically a line of pylons or a windfarm has a huge impact on such a flat area, and nature really needs the protected areas to be connected by a more sympathetic type of farming.



Having said all that, now that the nesting season has finished, the Environment Agency are out clearing the lodes (drainage channels). And this particular lode is part of the system which maintains water levels in the Sedge Fen. OK, time to stop thinking so much and instead just enjoy one of the newer spectacles of the fen.



Konik ponies. They were brought here to graze the vegetation and help to maintain the mosaic of habitats. They live a semi-wild existence here on Bakers' Fen, Burwell Fen, Adventurers' Fen and parts of Little Fen, though they are checked every day by the National Trust who manage the area.



We met and chatted with one of the staff who was on her way to check on the Highland cattle, but who couldn't resist stopping by to have a look at the Konik herd and this year's foals.



I think she said there were 70 or 80 ponies in the herd. Like all grazing animals they attract bothersome insects during the warmer months - and a retinue of Starlings only too happy to help out with grooming....




Take care.


32 comments:

  1. In defence of the fens. A good explanation of how change effects a landscape over time. Down in the South-West water meadows were also used to fertilize the soil and reading Tasker yesterday came across 'warp' land which is again flooded and the silt left behind to fertilize the ground. I love those Konik ponies, fat bellied and sleek in summer.

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  2. Growing up one of my best friends was named Fiona. For complicated reasons her nickname was Fen, so I became familiar with this habitat a long time ago. And agree it is beautiful. I am thrilled to see that part of it at least is being restored - and the ponies are charmers. Love the starlings too.

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  3. It warms the veritable cockles of my heart to know that this ancient landscape is (at least in part) being restored. One wonders how much carbon was released into the atmosphere when those ancient peat beds were exposed and exploited. Surely now, in the face of a looming Sixth Extinction, it is past time to give nature its due. And this has to be a practice that transcends political whim and the changing of the guard at Westminster. I am quite sure the horses will agree!

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  4. Beautiful place to visit though I do wonder if with the sea rising if it will get flooded again

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  5. You make a good case for returning these lands to their more natural state.

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  6. I think the fields of grasses and wildflowers are so lovely, John! You certainly have a talent for capturing their beauty.

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  7. I see beauty in all the shots. I too love the farmland, but I love the wild, unstructured fields just as much.

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  8. Great to be introduced to these interesting areas...flatlands and perhaps wetlands. It is strange that efforts of man to improve often end up needing to be restored, when all has been lost that the improvements intended. Why can't people do better at imagining the results of their good intentions?

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  9. It's good to hear that they ae trying to put some of the land back to some kind of natural habitat.

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  10. To me these meadows still look like a very wild and beautiful place. Ponies are better than factories.

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  11. I've never seen square bales of hay. Thanks for the tour, John.

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  12. Muy buenas fotografías. Me gusta mucho las alpacas ya bien apiladas.
    Feliz fin de semana. Un abrazo.

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  13. I think it's beautiful in its own way. I'm glad they are trying to restore some back to the boggy fen it once was. I like the amount of sky you can see over those flat lands. It never looks the same two days running.

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  14. I think this should be published somewhere. It is wonderfully written and of great interest. It seems like a unique point of view. Being in the US, I know nothing about so many areas of England. I think I have read a book (Peter Wimsey?) about flooding in the fens.

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  15. Wonderful photos, as usual, John. I'd never considered natural beauty to go through fads, but of course you're right. And anything that restores some of our wildlife has to be good. Someone pointed out to me the other day that we don't get car windscreen plastered with insects anymore - they are dying out; now that's serious. I've never heard of Konik ponies - nead to get down to East Anglia again - lovely part of the world, anyway - as you so often show. I hope you're well.

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    1. I was commenting about the lack of spattered windscreen on another blog only the other day. Also we no longer seem to be plagued with thunderflies at harvest time, wasps don't spoil as many picnics, and house flies seem to be a thing of the past. Worrying.

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  16. The hay bales look so country with charm

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  17. Lovely to read of the restoration of the Fens. The Konic ponies are delightful.

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  18. I've never seen starlings sit on a horse's back like that. The horses seem clever enough to know what they are doing, don't they. As always, thanks for a view of your world through your eyes.

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    1. I'm sure the horses are aware of what the starlings are doing; one swish of their long tails could remove the birds if they chose to do so.

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  19. Thanks for the history lesson on the use of the land in that area. I hope the restoration continues and is successful.

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  20. Sadly we've seen this play out at multiple locations and ecosystems. In the early days, much of our Southern California coast was marshes and estuaries. Easy to drain/backfill and build. Since then we've learned that that too was a big mistake.

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  21. A good news post with lovely images, especially of the horses with the Starlings on their backs. Alas, here, the mining companies are still being given the greenlight to destroy so many of our unique ecosystems.

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  22. John, I enjoyed seeing the horses and the foal as they brought back memories of Chincoteague, VA, and the wild ponies there.

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  23. It is a shame that our for-fathers didn't worry about preserving the fens. Hopefully, one day they will be returned to their natural state. I'm surprised the ponies are allowed there. Don't their hooves damage the land? We have a problem with wild brumbies in the Snowy Mountains damaging the environment. There are two groups of protesters, those who want the horses to stay and those who want them removed.

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  24. The ponies are kept on the land for their ability to trample the land as much as graze it. Before the land was drained the it's been grazed at low densities since Neolithic times and although this is not strictly the "natural" landscape it is what the wildlife became adapted to over the centuries. Although the ponies live an almost wild existence there are gates and fences in place to control their wanderings when necessary.

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  25. The Konik ponies are most attractive and clearly thriving. They do a grand job of clearing, trampling and manuring the land.

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  26. There is so much in your post I could comment on, but it would make my comment probably even longer than the post itself, and not very qualified, just drawing on a lot of what I have recently read in the biography about Alexander von Humboldt.
    Your photos of the ponies are great, you captured them so well in their semi-wild state.

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    1. Thanks for your comment, I was in rather the same predicament writing the post; knowing what to leave out. I think I've read the Humbolt book - Andrea Wulf? At first I was unsure about taking photos of the ponies in such a tight group, but I wanted to emphasise how they are very much herd animals.

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  27. Hi John - if only everyone could think of nature and life on earth as a whole, and not piecemeal jigsaws of life ... but I guess we have to live with what we've got. I totally appreciate your way of thinking ... no I won't start ... brilliant phots here and ideas - thanks - cheers Hilary

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  28. Love the ponies! They look so content and happy.

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