I am sitting here writing this, with two Linnets singing away in a cage behind me and have decided to tell you their life history. Part of the reason they are here is stupidity and part is circumstance. It is mainly the stupidity that this page is about.

These two linnets started a very uneventful life. Their parents built their nest in a lovely thick safe hedge in a garden where they laid their eggs. The young, five in all hatched out and for the first two weeks or so, grew rapidly and started to feather. Then it happened! Loud noises, their nest began to tremble, and the next thing they were spinning through the air and hitting the ground with a crash. If this was not bad enough something big and hairy jumped on top of them and three brothers and sisters disappeared down its red lane. Well that's what it must have seemed like from the linnet's viewpoint.

From the human point of view, it was a man looking out on his garden deciding that the hedge needed to be cut. He was quite fond of nature and enjoyed the birds living in his garden, feeding them in winter so that they would stay around. The hedge took priority and wildlife left his mind. He was cutting the hedge when the nest fell out and his dog jumped in before he could do anything and killed three of the young. The other two were brought to me and I hand reared them. Unfortunately the lady we pass small birds on to when they are ready for release was in America and by the time she returned the birds were too institutionalised and would probably not have survived in the wild.

Let's change the circumstances. Say if the young had been slightly older they would have scurried out of the nest with the disturbance and probably have been eaten by predators (wild or domestic) and all the man cutting the hedge would have found was an old nest. If they were younger even if they had been rescued they would have stood very little chance of survival (rearing young chicks is difficult and even with experience needs a lot of patience and luck). A third possibility is that he cut close to the nest but did not find it, then the parents would have deserted and the chicks starved.

Don't cut hedges or disturb possible nesting sites during the breeding season or for a couple of weeks each side of it. The season changes for a species as it moves north or south throughout its range and in a mild Autumn some species may even fit in an extra clutch,extending the breeding season even further. Possibly the best time from nature's point of view to cut hedges is from late February to early March leaving them sheltered throughout the Winter and not disturbing them through to the late spring, Summer and Autumn. If your hedges are slow growing perhaps cutting half every second year or cutting them in rotation over a number of years is even better.