Table of contents for May 2025 in The Field

Allan Mallinson A professional soldier for 35 years, Allan Mallinson commanded the 13th/18th Royal Hussars. He is the author of the Matthew Hervey novels chronicling the life of an early-19th-century cavalry officer, and six books of military history, including The Making of the British Army. He writes the military obituaries for The Times and has written on historical themes periodically for The Field for 30 years. What does May hold? “May is ‘the month of full song’, wrote Edward Grey in The Charm of Birds (1927): ‘In May we pass definitely from the bareness of winter to the luxuriance of summer.’ I shall be out on Salisbury Plain, where we live, to see the stone curlew and hear the cuckoo.” Tobias Coe An obsessive angler, Tobias Coe has been writing…

After a catalogue of delays and confusion, the general licence GL43 was finally due to be released as The Field went to press. Environment secretary Steve Barclay also announced that a substantial number of Special Protection Areas (SPA) will be covered by a new general licence: GL45. This will allow the release of gamebirds without the need to apply for individual licences. However, shoots in areas not covered by this new licence will still have to apply for an individual one. After last year’s announcement from Defra that the release of gamebirds on SPAs or within a 500-metre buffer zone would no longer be permitted under the existing general licence GL43, justified by the risk of avian flu, this development will come as a relief to many. However, a degree…

Email charlotte.mackaness@futurenet.com…

THIS ESTATE comprises about 1,000 acres of prime farmland, historic woodlands and residential properties in Here fordshire’s Golden Valley. Michaelchurch enjoys views of the Black Mountains and has options as a working estate, a lifestyle purchase or an investment in land and conservation, offering plenty of diversification opportunities. The estate includes the five-bedroom Escley House, set in 26 acres, with stables, an outdoor swimming pool and outbuildings. There are several farmsteads boasting a mix of land, agricultural buildings and houses, one of which is a Grade II-listed 17th-century farmhouse currently run as self-catering accommodation with stables and grazing land. Michaelchurch estate is available as awhole or in 17 lots. The village of Michaelchurch Escley is eight miles from Hay-on-Wye. Agent: Strutt & Parker ♦ Tel: 020 7318 5166 ♦ Guide…

YOU DON’T need to be a modern-day Izaak Walton to grasp that time spent fishing is often as much about the therapy as the catch. Even if nothing nibbles, the stillness of a day by the water, broken only by the flash of a kingfisher or plop of a water vole, is a healing – and relatively accessible – counterbalance to life’s stresses. Many charities and government bodies now tap into the therapeutic properties of our country’s abundant water sources but there’s plenty of scope for individuals to join this effort too. Whether your skills lie in casting or tea-making, they can make a real difference. But where to start? If you’d prefer the support and structure that comes from a coordinated effort then contact the Angling Trust. As the…

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MOST SEASONED anglers will no doubt have heard the phrase ‘observation, imitation, presentation’ or OIP. This three-step mantra neatly condenses the complexity of fly-fishing (and arguably many other forms of fishing) down to a stark summation of its parts. Fly anglers place a huge amount of emphasis on the ‘imitation’ part of OIP. The tens of thousands of different flies that have been invented and tied over the centuries attest to this. Our fixation on hatches, when and where they happen, how fish react to them and the resulting visual aspect of our sport means that ‘observation’ is a fundamental attribute of any successful angler. An angler who can’t spot fish or pick out the signs of what they may be How a fly is delivered can have a big…

JEANNIE was like a talisman. Everybody always expected me in my yellow wellington boots with my white dog,” remembers the gardener and author of The Apprehensive Gardener Griselda Kerr, who began a lifelong love affair with West Highland White Terriers after being given Jeannie in her late teens. Kerr is now in her seventies and the dogs are still a fixture at her Derbyshire home, where her current Westie Hebe, who has turned 17, still faithfully gardens with her, always settling down exactly where she wants to work. “Dog number one, Jeannie, came from a very smart breeder in Longtown, Cumbria. She was a fantastic character and went everywhere with me in my twenties – including shooting, like all my Westies have done. She worked underneath the hedgerows where the…

MY LOCAL county show, the Suffolk, takes place at the end of May every year, attracting around 90,000 visitors. A large percentage are accompanied by their dogs. I’m sure that most of the human visitors enjoy the show but do their dogs also relish the experience? My guess is not many of them do or at least not as much as we do. We may delight in frequenting game and country fairs but it’s not so much fun for a dog on a lead. A cynical friend of mine insists that most people take their dog (or dogs) to country fairs, point-to-points and other horsey events to show them off. He argues that none consulted their dog beforehand, nor asked it afterwards whether it had enjoyed itself and would want…

Send queries to Rosie Macdonald, Country Queries Editor, The Field, Future Publishing PLC, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR. For more, visit: thefield.co.uk Email country-queries@hectareshouse.co.uk Follow Rosie on Instagram @dizzy_m On a bluebell binge Q We have had a disappointing display of bluebells in our garden this year thanks to deer that seem to have moved into nearby woods. They have munched the leaves to an inch high and have left the copious numbers of daffodils untouched – why? NT, by email A Daffodil bulbs contain poisonous alkaloids that seem to deter most deer and rabbits from nipping at the leaves, unlike bluebells. Muntjac, in particular, enjoy eating bluebells and if food is in short supply they will often try any plants on offer. The Royal Horticultural Society has compiled a list…

Asparagus and walnut pesto pasta salad Making the most of asparagus season, this pasta salad has a refreshing, herby, tangy sauce that works beautifully with the nutty, buttery cheese. We produce some amazing sheep’s cheese in the UK and some of my favourites include The English Pecorino by White Lake in Somerset, Corra Linn by Errington in Lanarkshire, and Spenwood by Village Maid in Berkshire (all available online). Serves 6 as a side 300g asparagus, trimmed and washed300g fusilli pasta300ml crème fraîche200g plain live yoghurt1 unwaxed lemon, zest and juice Walnut pesto 100g walnuts, lightly roasted then roughly chopped100g hard British sheep’s cheese, finely grated15g mint leaves15g basil leavesA pinch of red chilli flakes4 tbsp cold-pressed rapeseed oil15g parsley, finely chopped 1 In a large pan of lightly salted boiling…

THE MAIN RING is surrounded 10 deep as the finest cows, sheep and pigs, all beautifully groomed and scrubbed, make their way purposefully round this bustling arena. It is a sight that swells the chests of farming folk with pride but is also a compelling pageant for those not born and raised in the countryside. I have been watching this spectacle at the Royal Bath & West, which has been in existence since the mid-18th century and moved to its permanent home in Somerset in 1965, for more than 40 years and I never tire of it. Neither, it seems, do those who regularly visit nor those who are beginning to come to shows for the first time. Indeed, dozens of county and agricultural shows of all sizes take place…

Users of the booking site FishPal have helped raise £27,000 for conservation and angling charities. As well as supporting organisations that preserve rivers and wildlife, the aim is to encourage a new generation of responsible anglers – hence an £8,400 donation to the Tweed Foundation’s TweedStart initiative. This gives children and young adults first-hand experience of fly-fishing, conservation and river stewardship. “Angling can be expensive, so the money also goes towards helping them buy kit such as rods, waders and life jackets, as well as giving them a skill set to build confidence,” said Will Draper, head of FishPal. “For budding anglers, programmes such as TweedSmart days help them learn about the salmon’s life cycle. They also go pond dipping and learn about freshwater invertebrates. “I’d like to say a…

At the time of going to press, the shooting world was anticipating the Government’s delayed official reaction to the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) proposal on the restriction of lead ammunition. While the Countryside Alliance (CA) maintains that moving away from lead has more benefits than downsides for game shooting, it has been campaigning for a five-year transition: the time period proposed by the HSE. According to the CA’s Roger Seddon, the greatest concern is the speed with which the EU is moving, as it is poised to ban lead shot for hunting after a threey ear transition. “If the EU turns around and bans the import of lead-shot game before we’ve left lead shot behind, the largest market for British game will disappear overnight. By transitioning to non-lead shot,…

THE RENOWNED wildlife artist, author, international competitor in skating, sailing and gliding, wildfowler and broadcaster Sir Peter Scott became the father of modern conservation, founding the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust in 1946. He was born in 1909, the only child of Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the celebrated polar explorer, and his wife, the artist and socialite Kathleen Bruce. Scott never knew his father, who left when he was only a few months old on the illfated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910, perishing two years later. A last letter from the Antarctic encouraged his wife to ‘make the boy interested in natural history’ and Scott’s early mentors included Sir Ray Lankester, former director of the Natural History Museum, and his two godfathers: JM Barrie, author of Peter…

THERE IS a forest of more than eight million trees in the south-east of England, with a massive river, chalkstreams and many waterways and wetlands. There’s riding, shooting and fishing, and a family of beavers living a three-minute walk from Greenford Underground station on the Central line. London, yes London, is a country paradise that unites sport and the city, so just like that you can shoot your rifle with a fund manager under London Bridge, get mounted in Hyde Park, catch a carp at Paddington and be carried away with clays at Canary Wharf. London has dozens of sporting venues, even in the heart of the City or the West End. If you have had a bad day at the office you should go and blast away a few…

WILD FISH, those naturally born and bred, are what discerning anglers are really about. Given the present drought of UK salmon and sea-trout and the relative scarcity of wild brownies, anglers are looking for challenges fresh and new. Why, I’ve wondered, have so many predominately salmonid anglers relished a cast on the cyprinid side? My new companions seem to have loved the skills we employ; the light, responsive tackle we use; the mobility of our approaches; the size, power and beauty of the fish we catch; and the stunning waters we often wade in – no big chairs and tackle trollies for us. As two brothers recently said to me, “Why should we pay two grand a day in Iceland when we can have this much fun at home at…

NATIVE PONIES are a treasured feature of the British Isles. Beautiful, intelligent and endlessly versatile, they imprint themselves on the hearts of children and adults alike. However, despite their undoubted talents and charisma, numbers are in decline. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) names five of Britain’s native pony breeds – Welsh Section B, Dartmoor, Fell, Highland and New Forest – on its ‘at risk’ list, while Dales, Eriskay and Exmoor ponies are marked for further concern on a list marked ‘priority’. However, against this backdrop, an increasing spotlight on native ponies’ value as grazers has been encouraging for breed champions. It is not unusual to find Dartmoor ponies on the cliffs of Dover, Eriskays on the Cumbrian fells and Welsh Mountains on the Norfolk Broads. Some are introduced in…

WITH AN estimated 25 million people playing on courts in more than 90 countries, padel is clearly already a smash. Such statistics are particularly impressive for a game only invented some 60 years ago by a Spanish businessman living in Mexico, and going loco down in Acapulco looking for something less punishing than tennis. Enrique Corcuera wanted to create a sport that wasn’t as exhausting as tennis but one that would generate similar exhilaration. And what he came up with quickly caught on with the Hispanic jet set. By adding a three-metre wall and two low side walls to his pelota court to bounce the ball off, slinging a low net across, and calling it padel, Corcuera devised the basics of what would be tweaked a little before growing into…

WELL, AS promised in April’s column, I tried to put my money where my mouth has been and buy a car at auction. The story to date: my BMW 320 ‘drowned’ and written off. Cue swanky newish hire car, full of electronic nagging systems that drove me near bananas. Solution: buy older, non-electro-gizmo’d replacement. First, a desultory tour of Banbury’s used car emporiums, which just confirmed how boring and samey most modern cars seem; plenty of beefy-looking SUVs, many with surprisingly small engines that are not even four-wheel drive (4WD). I was momentarily tempted by a 2017 Volkswagen Tiguan diesel 4WD: £14,850 with 80,000 miles on the clock. However, the saleswoman soon got shirty with me when she insisted it was “79,000 miles” and I pointed out that the mileometer…

IN GARDENING, as in any other major human preoccupation, fashion rules. At present, hybrid tea roses and heathers are in eclipse, while wildflowers and dahlias are enjoying their time in the sun – literally. Dahlias, particularly, are the darlings of the Instagram crowd, since they are not only strikingly colourful, and often beautiful, but there are more than 57,000 registered cultivated varieties and counting. You just can’t get to the end of them. How on earth did that happen? The 49 species of dahlia are indigenous to Mexico and other parts of Central America, and were used by the Aztecs for medicines and in cooking, since some of the species have edible tubers. They came to the notice of Europeans after the conquest of Mexico by Spaniards in 1521. However,…

Across 5 Glossy type of crow, predator of e.g. pheasant eggs (7) 6 White coated, it’s the largest breed of spaniel (7) 9 Aromatic herb – in healthy meal! (5) 10 Title applied to a London park such as Kensington Gardens (5) 11 Either way, it’s a small songbird (3) 12 Alien to the UK, say, as the muntjac is (3-6) 14 Condition of soil that’s ready for planting (5) 16 Small ammunition… regurgitated by owls? (7) 17 Derbyshire river loved by Compleat Angler author Izaak Walton (7) 19 Mountain chain (5) 21 Blue wildflower and Peak District cavern (9) 23 Wild silver fish variant of golden orfe (3) 25 In which sporting clays are usually presented (5) 26 Long-necked, fish-eating wader (5) 28 Hoist used in skinning deer (7) 29 Large seabirds that dive…

The Government’s decision to pause applications for the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) has been described as ‘another shattering blow’ by National Farmers’ Union (NFU) president Tom Bradshaw. Launched in 2022, the SFI scheme rewarded sustainable food production while helping to protect and enhance nature. The NFU was given just 30 minutes’ warning by Defra before ministers briefed the press on the decision to suspend applications due to the funding ceiling being reached, leaving it unable to inform members. “There has been no consultation, no communication; there has been a total lack of the ‘partnership and co-design’ Defra loves to talk about,” Bradshaw revealed. “That ministers are trumpeting this as good news shows how desperately detached they are from the reality on the ground and how little they understand this industry.”…

Rural workers recognised The winners of Lantra Scotland’s ALBAS Awards 2025, which recognise talented young people starting their careers in the rural sector, have been announced. Among the winners was Murray Henderson, who took the Game and Wildlife Learner of the Year award. Henderson is a modern wildlife ranger apprentice with Forestry and Land Scotland. College boost for rare breeds Members of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) in York are supporting Askham Bryan College as it adds rare livestock to the animals in its care. The Askham Bryan Heritage Conservation Farm has been established with the help of members from the RBST York support group. Fall in Scottish wildlife crime The Scottish government’s Wildlife Crime in Scotland Report 2022-23 has revealed a 23% decrease on the previous year, down…

For decades the GWCT has been publishing scientific papers relating to whether predation management has an effect on game and wildlife production. From this research we can determine that it is likely that high predation pressures can contribute to lower productivity among groundnesting species such as grey partridges, curlew and red grouse [pictured]. Targeted predation control focusing on foxes, rats, carrion crows, magpies and mustelids during the nesting and fledging season (March to July) via legal lethal control can be used to help mitigate poor breeding success in waders. Non-lethal methods can also be employed, including exclusion zones of electric fences. However, a study in Shropshire and the Welsh Marches showed that although these fences helped curlew nests to reach the hatching stage, no chicks survived to fledge due to…

SHOOTING can level us all. Many of us have suffered the ignominy of the day when things have just not gone right, when our shots find open sky without touching a feather and we cannot conjure up any way to correct ourselves back into ‘form’. Worse, perhaps, are the pre-shoot-day anxieties this then brings to future outings in the field. The answer, we all know, is to build confidence through tuition and practice. Alarmingly, a fair proportion of guns fail to take heed of their inner voice. It remains, for a few, somehow unsporting to train and improve their shooting: a bizarre Edwardian legacy of thinking that is, fortunately, now being steadily consigned to the past. Shooting is undoubtedly a skill; something that must be learnt, trained and maintained in…

FOLK WHOSE passion is deceiving wary fish into taking artificial flies tend to be canny operators themselves. I am reminded of this each year when, Christmas holiday over and the end of the shooting season fast approaching, my mind swings to matters piscatorial: aka buying stuff for the coming season. And, for those of us on a budget, that means searching the internet for New Year sales bargains. However, year after year, usually I discover that you pesky up-at-dawn fishermen have beaten me to the early worms and snaffled the best kit, leaving only ‘bargains’ I don’t want or need – until last Christmas. Just as I was cursing my annual lack of foresight, a jolly alert popped into my email inbox. Mullock Jones was having a 1,500-lot fishing auction…

Maurice Pledger’s illustrated fishing memoirs, While My Float’s Still Cocked and Water Colours, are published by Coch-y-Bonddu Books. To see more of his work, visit: mauricepledger.com…

THE PRACTICE of marking conspicuous acts of bravery or service with some form of physical item did not take hold until the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. In Britain we used presentation swords for naval valour provided by the Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund (associated with the Lloyd’s insurance organisation), so in effect these were awarded by a civilian organisation and not the state. After Waterloo the government did issue every man who served on the battlefield with a medal. Although not for valour, this was nonetheless the start of the issue of campaign and valour awards. The French Consulate that followed the First Republic after a coup d’état in 1799, which saw Napoleon become First Consul of France, also wanted to recognise exceptional valour. Therefore, in 1799, it decided that ‘national rewards…

THE GUN under our lens this month is the Sporter model of the new Beretta Silver Pigeon, designated the 686 Silver Pigeon I Sport and supplied by GMK. It is a 30in 12-bore, fleur-de-lys superior proofed for steel shot and equipped with 70mm Optimachoke HP multichokes (five supplied), a 10mm x 8mm tapered sighting rib and long forcing cones in its Steelium monobloc barrels. The gun is mid-weight for a modern Sporter at 7lb 11oz. First impressions are of a well-designed and finished modern sporting weapon. It features a new pattern of broadly cut acanthus leaf laser ‘engraving’, which distinguishes the updated model (as does a restyled top-lever). The wood is quite plain at this grade and the action decoration is not especially bold (but tasteful). Beretta embellishment on basic…

FEW OF us can resist the chance to go places usually out of bounds or take a peek inside institutions normally closed to the public but Newmarket offers just that. Racing’s ‘headquarters’ has heritage and famous faces (both equine and human) in spades, and The Jockey Club Rooms are no exception. Open to non-members outside of the Flat season since 2018, they make a brilliant, centrally located base from which to explore the town and its legion of equestrian attractions. Membership of The Jockey Club remains by invitation only; traditionally new members were selected by secret ballot where a white ball signified a vote in support, a black opposition – hence the expression ‘blackballing’. Thankfully no such vote is required to book a room. The Jockey Club Rooms are quite…

GUNG-HO thrusters are lauded for their mud-splattered antics on the hunting field, every fall an opportunity to join the Tumblers’ Club; keen shots are admired for their steely determination in the face of driving rain and a prevailing wind; and the stalker in pursuit of a stag takes on the guise of a rugged commando. But spare a thought for the fisherman: the sporting underdog when it comes to heroism. Yes, there might be sun-drenched riverbanks, a genteel picnic laid out and the sort of prolonged silence that would give any modern wellness retreat a run for its money. However, it is their stoic ease with failure we must marvel at. ‘Why is a fisherman content to stand hour after hour up to the waist waiting for a bite?’ asked…