Country diary: Bird cherries, caterpillar silk and a beautiful dead hedge | Susie White

Allendale, Northumberland: How better to use a reluctantly felled tree than to turn it into a wind-filtering wildlife habitat, practical barrier and cost-free fence?A ghost tree shines silver against the greenery of the hillside wood. Sheathed in silk from its trunk to the tips of its branches, this bird cherry has been completely defoliated by caterpillars. These are the overwintered larvae of bird cherry ermine moths, Yponomeuta evonymella, which, having spun their protective webbing, can devour the leaves, safe from blue tits and parasitic wasps, before pupating. Some weeks later, thousands of slender moths will emerge, their white wings speckled with tiny black dots.Bird cherries abound in this valley. Fast-growing, often multi-trunked trees, one once stood by our boundary wall that had grown so tall it rocked in the winds, the movement of its roots bringing down the stonework. When it demolished the wall for the fifth time, we reluctantly had it felled in late winter before birds started nesting. As well as logs, this left a huge pile of brash. Continue reading...