Sadly, in the absence of any grazing livestock, I must spend some of my time wandering about with a mower or a brush-cutter trying to do what a cow would do. I'm aiming for a diversity of sward height: really short sward for the Autumn Lady's-tresses and other species that like it, tussocky sward for the voles and Harvest Mice, and everything in between. Hopefully, it also works out for a variety of plants and wild flowers.
I'm grateful to the animals that help make the grassland even more diverse by creating a bit of bare ground. Rabbits with their scraping:
Badgers digging for whatever it is they dig for:
Voles doing their bit by gardening around the entrances to their burrows:
Badgers trampling paths:
Moles pushing up mountains:
Humans digging holes. I created a patch of bare ground here three years ago to see what would happen (the answer was not much, though we did have Common Poppy in the garden for one year):
Yellow Meadow Ants Lasius flavus building their anthills:
This is my favourite anthill which is growing sideways. It points directly south-east, and illustrates the true purpose of the anthill which is to act as a solarium, catching the all-important early rays of the rising sun:
