Wildlife Wednesday – Looking for a New Home

January 4, 2017January 6, 2017 / Julie / 88 Comments

Hello!

Gentle Female Black Bird

Much has happened over the last 6 months. We have been on the house hunting roller coaster, drawing ever increasing circles on a map to find a new garden and a place we can call home. Leaving here is an easy decision, our children have their own homes now and our once rural outlook has changed – along with our little band of neighbours we fought and lost to a development ironically wanting the slice of rural life we have here. Sharing is hard sometimes.

Song Thrush eating the last of our Viburnahm berries

Declining Song Thrush enjoying the last of our Viburnham berries

The days of watching bats swoop across the house and listening to Owls call to each other have gone, as the field of wildflowers, damp ditches and pioneer trees are now turned over in the name of progress, I hope new hunting grounds have been found. Its time for a new family to live here, we have superb schools in our slice of commuter belt, our lovely village has an increasingly rare post office and thriving shop, great pubs and wonderful walks.

Busy little Blue Tit

But for us, we’d like something even more remote, maybe not a sensible decision in our mid fifties, a place with a huge pond, some wilderness, somewhere to grow trees, hedges and habitats for the wildlife we love and somewhere to create another garden from scratch. As for the house, we are really open minded. Somewhere for family and friends to visit would be lovely.

More Tea Vicar? (Our Summer table converted to bird table for the winter)

We’ve looked in Yorkshire, the East Coast, the West Coast, the South Coast, South Wales, Mid Wales, over to France, The Cotswolds. We almost bought a house in Somerset, but our chain broke, then felt relieved we hadn’t.

Scarpering Magpie

Our ideal home would be away from intensively farmed land. But as 70% of land is farmed in the UK and we need access to parents and children, the search is still on. Organic wild life friendly farms are few and far between. The impending detachment from EU legislation and the protection they gave our wildlife, is hopefully an opportunity for our government to commit to better or at the very least equal what we had. Farming although ‘rural’ does not mean more wildlife, often its the reverse, the trashing of our soils, the basis of life, the overload of chemicals at the expense of pollinators and the wider natural food chain, leaves us all poorer. Humans have food but laden with toxic pollutants, the natural world is in a desperate sharp decline.

Greater Spotted Woodpecker sharing sunflower hearts with a Great Tit

Six months of headless chicken searching on top of a crazy work schedule, has been comical at times, less so at others. And our buyer’s fragile chain has been a blessing as its given a breathing space to sort through a life times possessions. Mice had made a shredded nest in a box of children’s painting age 5. I hope their babies are as talented as mine.

Tea for Two

We shall probably be here till Spring, then take a rented house for a while. There is lots more still to sort, children’s paintings age 6 to start with. Decluttering and packing up for storage is very time consuming. Especially when there are birds to watch, walks to walk and stars to gaze at.

That’s not a turkey bone! Blue Tit enjoying the remnants of a fat block.

Our visiting birds are less skittish now we are at home more, they seemed as unsettled as we did. Most species will happily carry about their business with me in the garden but quickly forgot we are friends not foe on our return.

Happy to sit near by, one of our friendly Robins

WordPress has changed since I last wrote a post, has anyone upgraded? I think I am nearly up to capacity on photo storage, with 31% remaining, I’ve reduced the photo quality on this post, is this the best way to deal with that? I’m linking with Tina today for her Wildlife Wednesday meme, it seemed the most appropriate way to explain my absence. I’ve asked Tina already, but she is not up for sale otherwise we would be moving there!

Happy Wildlife Watching!

Citizen Science and the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

February 1, 2016 / Julie / 63 Comments

This weekend, saw the 37th annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, the increasingly popular citizen science opportunity to record visiting garden birds.

As always, lots of Blue Tits made an appearance and enjoyed the Sunflower hearts

The RSPB uses the data to monitor long term bird populations. With a strong marketing campaign to encourage folk to take part, participation rates are already up on last year. Analysed results are published in March. The RSPB encourage schools, groups and individuals to give up one hour and count visiting garden or outdoor space birds and in recent years have included mammals and reptiles too. They are as interested in whats not being seen as the birds that do visit.

Identifying a Coal Tit – white stripe on back of head and two small white bars on wings

As gardeners we can be in tune with our natural world and understand how our wildlife is faring in a world of diminishing habitats. Largely due to industrialisation, pesticide use on our farmland and gardens which destroy the invertebrates at the source of the food chain and increased house building. We will have a better chance to understand what man has done and what we could do to help mitigate or prevent further destruction to our living planet. We need to co-exist, not exist at the expense of other creatures.

Male Great Spotted Woodpecker making an appearance in the allotted hour

Climate change, brought home this year by the unseasonable mild winter and dreadful flooding in the UK, not only threatens the homes and livelihoods of people but the habitat, shelter and foraging opportunities for our wildlife too, by taking part in a citizen science project we can play a small part in helping our scientists to understand more of whats going on.

Robin, one of two that showed up for the Big Garden Birdwatch hour

Many of our birds are now in sharp decline, 60 per cent of UK wildlife species monitored for the State of Nature report have declined over the last 50 years. I cannot imagine wanting to garden without hearing birdsong or being distracted by a Bee at work, those simple pleasures will disappear along with us too, if we continue to destroy our natural world.

Wildlife Wednesday – Early Winter preparations

December 2, 2015 / Julie / 66 Comments

Over the last month high winds have brought down an ivy clad tree in our lane and many of the standing perennials I leave for sheltering invertebrates and foraging birds were blown to the ground. Temperatures have been slowly dropping and the first frost left its sparkling mark. We have put high energy, fat and suet up, to help birds maintain their body temperatures especially on cold nights.

Blue Tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) on fat filled Coconut feeder

The Strong adult bills cope with seeds, sunflower hearts and peanuts but come springtime and early summer their chicks need caterpillars and up to 100 caterpillars a day, so for a brood of 10, thats 1,000 per day, collected from trees and shrubs. A very good reason to plant more trees, shrubs and a native hedge.

Blue Tit

To the right of our east facing dining room window we have a veteran climbing hydrangea petiolaris, nearly 15 feet wide and 10 feet tall. The Summer flowers are a Bee magnet but in the winter when the leaves drop the gnarled structure becomes a playground for birds. Hanging fat filled coconut shells from the branches near the windows have brought in some confident Blue Tits. They are more common in our UK gardens now; once they would have lived primarily in deciduous woodland, where the food they need for their chicks to survive is hopefully abundant. The BTO report that males are usually brighter in colour than the females and the youngsters have pale yellow rather than white cheeks, but so far I haven’t been able to distinguish the adults apart, hopefully there will be a chance to see a chicks pale yellow cheeks next spring.

Squirrel stealing the birds peanuts

Another woodland but sometimes less welcome visitor is the Squirrel, we feed the birds every day and winter peanuts are pricey but birds bring so much joy and make our garden a better place to be. As winter begins several Grey Squirrels are visiting, all with a variation in colouring, we were really intrigued to see one with the cream underbelly colouring of our native Red Squirrel. But its not a hybrid, just a variation. The Greys are still causing controversy and the cull debate goes on. Anglesea an island off the north coast of Wales separated by the Menai Strait and linked to the mainland by two bridges have just declared they are a Grey Squirrel free zone. They achieved this by culling the Greys with the last reported sighting in 2013. There are now 700 Red Squirrels on the Island, which they hope will thrive.

Robin (Erithacus rubecula)

We have noticed Robins trying to extract seed from the feeders but they do not seem to be designed to cling on. Occasionally I put mealworms and sunflower hearts on a mesh ground platform for Robins but our wet November often left a soggy mess. So we placed fat filled cages adjacent to convenient branches, close enough for the Robin to reach across and take the spoils. Sheltering from the high wind this little chap was quite happy for me to stand close by with a camera.

Elsewhere in our garden, I am bundling up the hollow stems of the wind strewn perennials and stacking logs to create ‘dead wood habitats’ which should rot down and any overwintering invertebrates provide more food for birds in the Spring. The hollow stems and seed heads will provide shelter for lady birds, lacewings and other beneficials. Piles of leaves have been stuffed into hedge bottoms. And we’ve been cleaning bird boxes and putting up new ones in readiness for the next cycle of life.