Hedgehogs and poppies - the connection !

A field of wild scarlet poppies is an astonishing sight - seeds of these ephemeral beauties have the ability to lie dormant for decades since the time before modern chemicals were sprayed. When farmers desist from spraying everything in their path with pesticides they once again spring forth from underground . How sad that modern agricultural practices should have killed off these and many other wild flowers - The compulsory EU set aside policy of of the 1990's ( now no longer in place) a scheme which made it compulsory to take 10% of land out of production to reduce the "grain mountains" meant that farmers refrained from spraying these fields and were rewarded by the return of many arable wildflowers and the subsequent reappearance of birds, butterflies, hares, frogs, newts, hedgehogs and other wildlife that thrive on plants and seeds .