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Wildlife Gardening

Back in the summer, Pam asked Odette my wife whether we would like to enter the Wildlife Gardening competition which Great Boughton Parish Council was organising as part of Great Boughton in Bloom. Our response was no - but that we were interested in the concept and would welcome the opportunity for those interested to spread best practice.

So it was no great surprise when, some time after, a lady came round to look at our garden nor when, a few days later her husband dutifully followed to take a few photographs. It was, however, a big surprise to learn some time later still that we had actually won a competition we hadn't planned to enter. In fact, it turns out we've also won the booby prize - to write an article about wildlife gardening for Pam!

My main interest in wildlife is birds. The building of the Caldy Valley estate and the national and local demise of woodlands and, especially, farmland birds means that we no longer see in our gardens species such as cuckoo, snipe, skylark, tree sparrow or partridge that we had in our first few years here in the late '70s nor as many wintering bullfinches or redpolls nor the post breeding dispersal of warblers in late summer. So the best we can do is to try to cater for the needs of birds such as blue, great and coal tits, robin, blackbird, song thrush, wren, dunnock and the commoner finches - and just hope for the occasional sightings of rarer visitors such as greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers, treecreeper, nuthatches, etc. In fact we've also had sparrowhawk and jay nesting in or near us in the last few years but can't really claim the credit for these!

What we can do is to try to help the regular species by providing food, nest sites and areas for roosting. Our tit nestboxes are used quite regularly but the open fronted one is ignored by the robins who, like the wrens and blackbirds, prefer the ivy. In fact, I found out quite by accident this year that the open fronted box was being used by bees - which put a stop to some of my pruning! I also accidentally found a bumble bee nest when I was transferring material from an old compost heap to one of the council's new plastic compost bins. Song thrushes and greenfinch nest fairly frequently in our conifers and I presume the dunnocks do in the hawthorn hedge, though I don't look for their nests. I have recently added a couple of boxes for house sparrows but so far they've ignored them.

I put out the usual sorts of food, especially in the winter months, and plants like cotoneaster, holly and rowan provide food at this time of year. When we moved in, I planted an oak, one of the best trees for our native birds. It provides plenty of caterpillars for hungry mouths in the breeding season and, later, acorns for jays and squirrels - of the grey type unfortunately! Birds also need water and they have at least three sources; a bird bath, a ditch at the front (the one which the council incorrectly blamed for the flooding on Becketts Lane) and a small pond that they can use to drink and bathe.

The pond is, naturally, a blessing for other forms of wildlife; we get frogs laying their spawn every year (though for some reason, very little spawn hatched successfully this year), we've had dragonflies laying their eggs and once (only!) had a newt in the pond. I find the wintering frogs in the heaps when I'm spreading the compost and provide piles of wood and stones as alternative accommodation for them. Pity the newts don't use them as well. I've never found a hibernating hedgehog though there are plenty of hideaways suitable fro them and we do see them at other times of the year.

When we moved in almost thirty years ago, we could see a large variety of butterflies in the warmer months; these days we see far fewer despite all the suitable flowers such as hemp agrimony, purple loosestrife and evening primrose which Odette, who is responsible for the good looks of the garden, has planted. These plants also attract bees and other insects - but never the spotted flycatchers I'd love to see! In autumn, fallen apples and pears attract some species, including comma butterflies - and of course they are welcomed by various birds too. We save some of these windfalls for wintering thrushes but in these years of milder winters we see many fewer redwings and fieldfares. We have no specific plans for the coming months, just the usual winter maintenance, but if others have some suggestions....

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