Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post Reply
User avatar
Bat Macdui
Posts: 20266
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:19 am

Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Bat Macdui »

Covering 'birds', plus ponds and yellow rattle, plus mammals and moths. Etc. :))

My over and above the usual sightings on birds since the start of this year now includes a black cap. :love2: That popped by to have some sunflower hearts and a little bath in our half made pond. We also have infrequent bullfinches and a goldcrest, as well as a song thrush, which is gorgeous.

There's a blue tit overnighting in the nestbox with a camera (picture from a few nights ago). Maybe Lady R again, maybe Kevin. Maybe a whole other blue tit. If they start to nest I'll do a whole other 18+ rated thread, then the more delicate souls can avoid if they wish. :))

Plans for this year include developing the pond (large puddle). I'll do photos when the weather is better. I'm also going for more caterpillar friendly plants, as per Kate Bradbury, who has some great advice for planting native species that support the whole lifecycle of everything that's in your garden. I found her book really helpful and not off puttingly complicated, like some gardening instructionals.


I'm still doing my BTO weekly Garden Bird Watch. But if you've not the time for that, the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch is 25th - 27th January this year.
User avatar
Pippedydeadeye
Directory Pipquiries
Posts: 89247
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:15 pm

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Pippedydeadeye »

You missed 2020 in the title up there. :))
User avatar
Pippedydeadeye
Directory Pipquiries
Posts: 89247
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:15 pm

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Pippedydeadeye »

I need to refill the seed feeders this morning and plan to do the BGBW.
Mayday
Posts: 5076
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:16 pm

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Mayday »

I wonder if I could get the kids into the BGBW. I might give it a go, although we only really get long tailed tits and bluetits.

I saw our muntjac deer this morning :hbeat:

MrM bought me a wildlife camera last year for Christmas and I haven't set it up yet :doh: I really must do.
User avatar
Bat Macdui
Posts: 20266
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:19 am

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Bat Macdui »

Pippedydeadeye wrote: Sat Jan 11, 2020 11:38 am You missed 2020 in the title up there. :))
Cerise scares me. :))

Today's bird (and squirrel) count:
User avatar
ParisGal
Posts: 27436
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:22 am
Location: la France

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by ParisGal »

That ball of fluff :love:
User avatar
ParisGal
Posts: 27436
Joined: Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:22 am
Location: la France

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by ParisGal »

Not if it's Kevin though.
User avatar
Duophonic
Posts: 20421
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:04 pm
Location: Glasgow

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Duophonic »

I don't care if it is Kevin or not, fluffy bird :love:

It's the ciiiiircle of liiiiiife :sing:

I've mentioned before that we've planted hazel and hawthorne hedging out front and sloe, elder and guilder rose out the back. Yellow rattle has been put down one half of the garden to make way for native meadow plants. Hopefully it'll bring more insects in and raise our bird population.

The change we've had since we moved in has been massive, we've taken a large mainly sterile space with non native grasses, no real shelter for birds, no regular feeding schedules and week by week we've seen improvements. The bird song is deafening and there's so much activity out there.

I'll keep you all updated with pictures once spring hits and I can see changes and we sow our meadow.

I've kept you all updated with our fox (the pigeon is still out there) and squirrel activity but today we've had:

4 squirrels I have no idea where the new one has came from
8 various corvids mainly jackdaws but we had a raven and possibly a carrion crow due to the pigeon
1 blackbird - he's getting braver over the past few weeks and is now feeding on the patio with the others
I haven't counted the mixture of tree and house sparrows we get, they're a permanent fixture
3 great tits and a coal tit
6 pigeons - mix of feral and wood

I have what I think is a dunnock but I can't be sure.

Our big news is the sparrowhawk is back and we've had a feral pigeon fly into the patio doors in the scared flurry to get away. He's ok just a bit dazed and there were to my knowledge no other deaths so I'm hoping the sparrowhawk is going to be a regular visitor.

I'm going to try and entice a hedgehog or two to complete the set :))

Mr D will complete our BGBW as I'll be in the US.
BRING ON THE TRUMPETS!

Princess Clacky Thing
Topcat
Posts: 49275
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:11 am

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Topcat »

I think I saw a parakeet this morning.

That's big news in the Shire.
User avatar
Bat Macdui
Posts: 20266
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:19 am

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Bat Macdui »

I am envious of your tree sparrows, Duo. I keep checking my collection of sparrows see if there's a tree sparrow in there but they are all house sparrows so far.

One of the local passing cats is showing far too much interest in the lower seed feeder so I will have to do something about that. I think I'll need to raise it and chop back some of the shrub cover the cat's using. As well as judicious use of my Star Wars super soaker.
User avatar
Rebel Pebble
Posts: 23865
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 11:42 am
Location: Just right

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Rebel Pebble »

I am envious of all sparrows. Amongst all the birds I get here, sparrows are not on the list.

Bird regulars this winter are the usual strutting woodpigeons, blackbirds (absolutely guzzled the callicarpa berries), plenty of robins singing away, wrens, dunnocks, nuthatches, song thrush, chaffinches, assorted tits (mostly blue) and corvids (mostly magpies). Tawny owls often heard at night. Raptors circle above the cricket pitch over the road and showed up a few times in the Summer to snatch a tit off the feeder. I'm hoping as the weather warms up I might start hearing green woodpeckers again too.

We had a huge mob of fighty, buzzy goldfinches over the summer and throughout autumn. The nyjer seed would empty every couple of days. They seem to have dwindled as winter as taken hold so I hope they come back. Same for the LTTs. The massive group that used to show at 4pm and raid the fatballs isn't such a regular occurrence at the moment. I've kept all three birdbaths going, as well as the four feeders (fatballs, peanuts, nyjer, seed mix)

There could be something overwintering in my roof apex, but I wouldn't know about it. I'd love if that were Kevin the Killer, Bats. :))

Other wildlife: at least one very healthy country fox, about 3-4 squirrels - one of which has lost most of its tail so it looks like an undersized rabbit if you catch it out of the corner of your eye - and probably some moles somewhere since the wildlife cam in Summer caught a fox with one in its mouth. I wanted said wildlife cam to capture a hedgehog but it didn't, ever. I still hope we have them though, lurking in the harder to reach bits of the garden. We have lots of undisturbed weedy* places and keep dead wood piles as well.

Since the fences went up at the back we haven't seen any more deer or badgers. :sad:

*wildlife gardening and laziness are a good match.
Last edited by Rebel Pebble on Wed Jan 15, 2020 11:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
smalex
Posts: 52587
Joined: Fri Feb 03, 2006 10:29 am

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by smalex »

I have never surveyed the birds in the garden. I feel like there aren't many but maybe I'm wrong. Otherwise, we occasionally get some foxes chasing through the back, but otherwise there's not much evidence of anything apart from cats.
The gardens are quite heavily planted with perennials and annuals grown from seeds so we do get absolutely loads of bees and other insects in the summer, which pleases me. We're just in the process of tearing up a big section of the lawn to turn it into more planting beds so there'll be even more of them this summer. I need to be better at not cutting back things and letting them go to seed more I think, a leaving some dead wood piles.
User avatar
Duophonic
Posts: 20421
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:04 pm
Location: Glasgow

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Duophonic »

For my birthday I received a bee hotel which is hopefully ok to use and not one of the ones that are a bit dodgy, it's untreated wood with a zinc roof but I haven't googled yet.

I've also received two straw bird nesting pouches and some Herdwick wool nesting material that I'll put out soon.

My big news is that the pigeon is no longer there. No idea when the fox returned but it was gone by 9am Thursday morning.

I think we get so many sparrows due to all the houses having eaves and us backing onto the park so we're coppiced in at the back and have some massive trees so that the gardens aren't overlooked in any way. They must love all the shelter. They also seem to love that next door to our left has let their garden go a bit so they're loving a massively uncontrolled section of holly. They're always peeking out from it.
BRING ON THE TRUMPETS!

Princess Clacky Thing
Mountain Goat
Posts: 27177
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 12:14 pm
Location: London

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Mountain Goat »

My garden is a mess at the moment but is designed for wildlife and I hope to be a bit more inspired with it this year. It's also tiny and urban so quite limited in scope, but given that most of the adjoining gardens are paved or artificial turf, it's a bit of an oasis, along with the garden backing on to it.

Birds are quite limited - typical urban species like pigeons and various corvids, lots of parakeets, great tits on my sambucas, starlings (who breed every year in the garden behind and do flying practice from my roof to theirs), robins and a blackbird called Harry are my regular visitors. We had what was probably a dunnock the other day (I didn't get a good enough look). I've never seen a finch, although Scribble gets them. :lg: I don't feed the birds anymore because of the cats - it feels like I'm just setting them up for disaster - but the garden behind does.

I've got three regular fat squirrels - Melissa and her boys Derek and Clive. Melissa knocks at the cat flap when she wants a monkey nut, Derek rattles a loose trellis, and Clive gets up on his hind legs on the kitchen windowsill and taps on it. In the summer when the back door was open most of the time, they'd just come in to the kitchen to ask. If they come in and I'm upstairs, Joy yells for me to come down and feed them. Several times in the summer/autumn I'd hear her doing her specific call that means "come downstairs, there's something interesting for you here" (always strikes fear in my heart) and come down and see her sitting on the back doorstep next to a squirrel with its paw out.

We get foxes out the front and occasionally in the back. There was a mother and cub on next door's shed on Boxing Day.

My pond needs a good clear out, it's tiny and badly positioned so easily gets clogged. It is home to a lot of frogs and the occasional holidaying toad (the garden behind also has a pond, and there is a route through the back fence that I call The Amphibian Superhighway where, in the right season, you can always spot a traffic jam of small frogs off to try out a different pond for a while.) There are newts everywhere, in the pond, under the brick pile which was initially just where I put some bricks but soon became a newt high rise block so is now a fixture, which is lovely because newts aren't doing too well generally. There's the occasional damselfly over the pond too.

Planting is very much wildlife friendly, so we get lots of bees, butterflies and also birds eating berries and squirrels eating bark and my vegetables. There's a log pile behind the rhubarb that I haven't disturbed (so not sure if anything's in there), and the aforementioned brick high rise by the wallflower.

And probably more but this is already too long.
Protected by the ejaculation of serpents
User avatar
Bat Macdui
Posts: 20266
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:19 am

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Bat Macdui »

I didn't know there were problems with some bee hotels. I have one that was also a present, I'll have to check it's okay. No bees deigned to use it last year, but our garden wasn't massively bee friendly then, either.

We do have gaps in fences, but I don't think we get wandering hedgehogs and amphibians (though it's possible we could this year, with new pond). We're on a hill with all the houses stepped, though, so they'd have to brave a series of North Face of the Eiger slopes to get at us from any local nature.

I poked one of our squirrels the other day. :)) I was amazed it let me get that close. I was simply trying to gently dissuade it from wrecking the seed feeder. The squirrel food is on the platform in the hedge. Maybe I need signs. :))
User avatar
Pippedydeadeye
Directory Pipquiries
Posts: 89247
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:15 pm

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Pippedydeadeye »

There was a sparrow hawk in my garden when I got home this morning. I need to make sure I time my BGBW for the optimum amount & mix of visitors.
User avatar
Duophonic
Posts: 20421
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:04 pm
Location: Glasgow

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Duophonic »

Your sparrowhawk has to be included in the BGBW surely.

No sparrowhawk sighted since the last time and I seem to have chased my tree sparrows away. Haven't seen sight of them over the past few days, the house sparrows are still there peeping out from the overgrown holly. The pigeons are there and I have a pair of collared doves who chase away a solitary dove that tries to feed on the patio. I hope my solitary guy finds someone to team up with. :(

Tons of buds appearing on my hedges so I'm really hopeful for them.
BRING ON THE TRUMPETS!

Princess Clacky Thing
User avatar
Pippedydeadeye
Directory Pipquiries
Posts: 89247
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:15 pm

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Pippedydeadeye »

It needs to come back next weekend to count!
User avatar
Duophonic
Posts: 20421
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:04 pm
Location: Glasgow

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Duophonic »

Just sneak him in :look:

I'm sure Bats or Ruby won't tell on you. :shh:
BRING ON THE TRUMPETS!

Princess Clacky Thing
User avatar
Bat Macdui
Posts: 20266
Joined: Wed Feb 25, 2015 11:19 am

Re: Gardening for Wildlife and Wildlife in the Garden

Post by Bat Macdui »

:look:

There are RULES. :))
Post Reply