My garden hedge is full of empty nests. The blackbirds have fledged, twice, and so have the dunnocks. Successfully fending off sparrowhawks and cats, their exhausted parents are now enjoying a well-earned holiday. In the fields beyond our home, though, parents still slave away, feeding baby bullfinches, linnets and yellowhammers tucked in the hedges that grace our countryside.

As well as the usual predators, every August these declining species have had to fend off another ravenous monster: the hedge-trimmer. This summer and last, however, the cutting machines are silent because the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has taken an excellent, science-led policy decision: to protect these birds by extending the farmland hedge-cutting ban by a month, to 31 August.

This ban is not responsible for the overgrown lanes vexing rural holidaymakers, because roadside hedges can still be cut for safety reasons (blame austerity for wild roadsides), but it is vexing many farmers. August is a convenient time for hedge-cutting because the ground is dry and the work doesn’t obstruct more important tasks, such as sowing crops.

The science, however, is unequivocal: more than 40,000 nesting records collected by volunteers for the British Trust for Ornithology prove that finches and buntings nest through August. Ground-nesting skylarks and corn buntings are also destroyed by hedge-cutters driving along field margins.

Concerns mount over Andrea Leadsom's suitability for environment role Read more

As farmers press to repeal the ban, the wildlife campaigner Mark Avery says its survival will be a test of both the new Defra secretary, Andrea Leadsom, and whether we are in danger of slipping into a post-science era of countryside management.

I hope this wild-hedged August will show farmers that they can save money by cutting back on contractors and help birds, insects and mammals. We need to escape the tyranny of the tidy hedge.

Lynx effect

I expected the story of the lynx fleeing Dartmoor zoo to run and run, but it’s ended with Flaviu being trapped on Dartmoor and “grumpily” returned to captivity.

It’s not a romantic climax, but not tragic either. Benjamin Mee, the zoo’s owner, is right when he says the lynx would’ve been shot had it remained in the wild. For anti-rewilders, Flaviu’s killing of four lambs during her short freedom is a valuable propaganda victory. However, it’s not so simple because captive-bred Flaviu has not learned to kill wild food, and so does not represent wild lynx behaviour.

If lynx are brought back, they will mostly trouble Britain’s burgeoning deer population. Nevertheless, the grudging acquiescence of local farmers must be won – via compensation, perhaps – if the recently proposed Kielder Forest reintroduction is to be a success.

Avalanches in slow motion

I can still picture the horror on Robbie Chater’s face when I asked him whether the Avalanches were working on a follow-up to their amazing debut album, Since I Left You. His reply went something like: we’ve just spent four years making this, please don’t make me think about the next one. I don’t have it verbatim because it’s on a lost cassette tape dating from 2001. During that Guardian interview on Melbourne’s sunny Fitzroy Street neither of us imagined their second record would take another 15 years. The backstory to the Avalanches’ new album, Wildflower, is spectacular – and so is its warm, beautiful and complex music. Whether it’s accidental, perfectionism or an act of defiance, their slowness sets a superb example.