It was more than 230 years ago that the Rev Gilbert White became the first person to identify the chiffchaff, willow warbler and wood warbler as three distinct species. The Hampshire county parson was also the first to describe the harvest mouse and the noctule bat, and to tell of swifts mating in flight, something not recorded again until the 1930s. He was fascinated by his pet tortoise, Timothy, and why he needed so much sleep.
White’s careful, vivid and seemingly trivial descriptions of the wildlife he encountered around the village of Selborne as he walked between parishes made him a pioneering naturalist. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, first published in 1789, has never been out of print.
A statue of White, created by sculptor Peter Lyell Robinson, has the naturalist sitting on a bench, notebook in one hand, a swallow being released from the other
Many generations later, a group of farmers and volunteers has spent five years walking the same land and discovered 88 of the 120 bird species spotted by White as well as a number of new species, taking the total to 114. This has resulted in Farming in Partnership With Nature – a New Natural History of Selborne, the most comprehensive survey of the landscape since White carried out his own work.
Its authors say it shows the value of wildlife-friendly farming and White’s approach to “watching narrowly”, by observing local wildlife in detail – however trivial it might seem.
Illustration facing the title page of the 1789 first edition of White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
Fifteen years ago, Blackmoor estate, a few miles from Gilbert White’s house, was arable land, but the estate’s managing director, William Selborne (whose great-great-great-grandfather took the name Selborne in the 19th century) decided he wanted to return it to chalk grassland and link up two nature reserves – Noar Hill and Selborne Common.
In the years that followed, and with the help of a government grant, wildlife poured out of the reserves and into the farmland. Today, the fields are alive with movement and sound – skylarks trill, quaking-grass shakes in the breeze, oxeye daisies and patches of pyramidal and spotted orchid flourish. There are so many wildflowers that a pastel-pink hue hangs above the field. Beyond are scruffy field margins made for hunting barn owls. There are four owlets being raised in the oak tree in the valley.
Wildflower meadows flourish in a Hampshire landscape that White would have recognised
But from the beginning, Selborne realised that “however good your farm is, you’re only as good as your neighbours. The experience made me realise that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts.”
He got in touch with one of his neighbours, Kate Faulkner, a partner in her family’s business at Norton farm, where her father-in-law, Derick Faulkner, had been an early adopter of this way of farming. Kate and Selborne started thinking about how other farmers could give over patches of land for wildlife and set about forming a “farming cluster” – one of more than 100 across England – according to the survey.
Kate Faulkner from Norton farm and William Selborne from Blackmoor estate, who lead a farming network taking in land around White’s house
“We were phoning our neighbours, thinking some would be for, and some not, but it was an almost universal buy-in,” Selborne says.
Since then, they have been leading a farming network called the Selborne Landscape Partnership (SLP), which covers 5,600 hectares (14,000 acres), much of which is within the South Downs national park. It is a well-watered landscape, looking green and youthful as summer starts. One car can pass at a time on the country lanes as long grasses spill over from the verges.
Copy of an original painting of the rear of White’s house in Selborne
At its centre is Gilbert White’s house. White is said to have been the first person to sign off a letter with an ‘x’, but his love was always this piece of England, where he revered “nature’s rude magnificence” on this “wildly majestic” ground.
He also made notes on the movements of his fellow villagers. Observing life in these valleys would keep him entertained for his entire life, and later inspire key figures including Charles Darwin. He was part of a tradition of early parson-naturalists who made a significant contribution to our understanding of natural history.
White’s love of nature started in his garden in Hampshire, which continues to inspire visitors today
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SLP started nearly 10 years ago and includes 30 farmers and land managers and a band of volunteers. They meet regularly to share information and ideas on a range of subjects from grassland and woodland management to articles for the parish magazine. They have been looking at old maps, finding ghost hedges and ghost ponds and putting them back in the landscape. Selborne says: “We don’t want to have a narrative of loss. You can look down the telescope a different way. You can have positive change in a landscape.”
They have also been working on restoring some of the 100 ponds in the area, as well as 15 miles of hedgerows and 74 hectares (180 acres) of flower-rich habitats. Some of this has been funded by government grants, including the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme.
Wildflower rich margins have been planted alongside crops as part of work to restore habitats
In a similar vein to White, those involved have focused on the specific species they love, and got to know one another better in the process. One farm ran the drive to put up owl boxes, and 53 have been installed across the network, with more than 80 barn owl chicks recorded since 2017. Faulkner wants to see lapwings thrive as they did in her childhood, and there is a WhatsApp group for farmers to compete over who has more of them.
Only one harvest mouse nest had been recorded in the area since the 1990s, with people assuming the species was locally extinct. The group made this a target species and volunteers have since counted nearly 500 nests. “When we looked, we found them,” says Faulkner. “Having got volunteers out, it’s lovely to see how much is out there, and that builds enthusiasm.”
“It sounds a cliche, but it did feel like we were walking in White’s footsteps. I wonder what he would think of this,” says Debbie Miller, the lead author of the Farming in Partnership with Nature report and a facilitator funded by Natural England.
In the landscape around White’s house farmers have worked hard to help different species thrive
About 10,000 species records were collected over a five-year period between January 2017 and December 2021. “Without actually going and looking for these things, we wouldn’t have accumulated all of this data … there’s been a sense of surprise that these things have been there but [the farmers had] never realised,” says Miller.
Miller says the success is partly due to the work farmers have been doing. “It’s fantastic to think that, in terms of the number of species Gilbert White was looking at, compared to what we were looking at, it was nearly the same,” she says. New additions to the landscape since White’s time include the Egyptian goose, white stork, little owl, little egret and goshawk.
Wildflower meadows look much as they would have done in White’s time
White did not look at the abundance of each species – and it is likely this has declined as it has nationally – but the fact they are still there is a cause for celebration, says Miller.
White’s love of nature started in his garden, where he experimented with flowers, shrubs, vegetables and fruit trees. Thanks to his daily notes in his Garden Kalendar and old paintings of the house, gardeners have been able to recreate the surrounding land with large wildflower meadows sweeping over the gently undulating landscape – which turns bright yellow with buttercups in spring, just as it did in White’s time.
Gardener Keith Oakley has worked to recreate White’s garden using notes, photographs and paintings
On his 20 acres of land, White did “landscape gardening on a budget”, says the gardener Keith Oakley. Dotted around are viewpoints marked by urns and statues, which are good places to observe nature from. The Great Oak, planted in 1730, is still there in front of the house, and the brewhouse, where he made his beer, has been resurrected by an enthusiastic team of volunteers.
But White is best known for championing the small things. He was well ahead of his time in recognising the importance of smaller lifeforms as engines of change. He wrote about earthworms in 1777: “Earthworms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm.” He also described “insignificant insects and reptiles” being of “much more consequence, and [having] much more influence in the economy of nature, than the incurious are aware of”.
The flower and herb gardens around White’s house, which features the naturalist’s study and some of his original writings
While his contemporaries, such as the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, were gallivanting around other countries, White showed that small interactions close to home were worthy of study. His affection for nature comes through in his writings – he was more interested in observing nature than classifying it.
For Oakley, this approach of “narrowly observing” is key. “There’s a really strong environmental message. It’s trying to show that you don’t need to go to the other side of the world to find interest in the natural world, in your own back garden, you can find as much of interest as flying to Africa.”
Statues and urns mark spots that offer some of the best views of the garden
White spent his whole life in this valley, partly because people didn’t travel as much in those days, but also because he had a problem with coach sickness. He never travelled north of the Midlands, east of Essex or west of Devon.
Today, his spirit is alive and well and his legacy lies in the joy of understanding things and celebrating nature, rather than thinking about its usefulness to humans. He also shows that, if you look closely enough, you may just find what you’re looking for.
• This article was amended on 28 July 2023. Linnaeus gallivanted around countries, but not “continents” as an earlier version said.
The restored farmlands are a fitting testament to White’s memory
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