Of Birds & Cake the Blog of Paul: Wildlife Garden

No birding today, alarm went off at 5AM, felt crap so stayed in bed😢hopefully the Poms hold off til next weekend to come through😀 annoyingly I felt better by lunchtime!!

Anyway whilst refreshing the pond with some water from the water butt, had no rain for ages, I spotted a frog in our pond so thought would do a post about our garden.

Frog in the pond

Our Garden is quite small 11 paces by 11 paces wide so not big by any standard, however it is still possible to do a lot for wildlife even in such a small space. Probably the best thing anyone can do in a garden is dig a pond, we dug ours in back in 2019, obviously for such a huge engineering feat you would expect all sorts of diggers and other earth-moving machines to be brought in ,but no I wasn't allowed had to dig it all by hand😢😲 when you take in my levels of fitness and the shoddy state of equipment at hand, scaled up it's the equivalent of building the Pyramids or Stonehenge!!😱

Basically an afternoons work and a few quid to the garden center for the materials, plants such as Hornwort, Marsh Marigold and Water Mint and you have what has become a source of endless interest and excitement, although obviously it depends on your threshold for excitement, it's not Bungee jump or spotting a Green-winged Teal levels of excitement but still fun.

The Pond today

Pretty much from the off the wildlife found the pond with various bugs and beasties being spotted, but this year things have really taken off with several big lumps of frogspawn spotted producing hundreds of Tadpoles this spring. Dragonflies and Damselflies have been in the garden and I'm pretty sure I've seen their Larvae in the pond so hopefully this summer some will emerge! The pond is also well used by the birds, with pretty much every species we have using it to bathe and drink from!!

A few of the Tadpoles

Marsh Marigold

Close up of the Frog bit concerned about his reappearance not sure if Frogs have cannibalistic tendencies hopefully he will stick to the Slugs and Snails that abound in the garden.

Of course the Garden is not all about the Pond, it's also about plants, we have planted a couple of Trees/Shrubs the most obvious is the Rowan, this was planted as part of my long-term, extremely cunning plan to get Waxwings in the garden, a Cotoneaster is also part of the plan, although it does rather rely on a cold winter, a Waxwing irruption and the poxy Blackbirds not eating all the berries by the end of September😡 so pretty unlikely but I'm keeping hopeful!!😁 The Rowan was planted a few years ago as a 2ft long whip which I think we got from Tesco of all places it has now grown into a 20+ foot high tree which produces good amounts of Blossom in the spring for insects and as mentioned above plenty of Berries in the Autumn. It is a small tree with quite sparse foliage so good for a small Garden like ours.

The Rowan with plenty of Blossom starting to appear, that Trunk is pure Carbon Capture! Also look closely you can see our pair of Blackbirds, Berry stealers extraordinaire, but finding plenty of worms, think they are feeding young, didn't nest in our garden this year but the rate they are appearing at suggests youngsters nearby

Rowan Blossom

The Cotoneaster doesn't look much now but will soon be covered in white flowers and then in the Autumn a blaze of Red Berries particularly liked by our Blackbirds, the occasional Song Thrush and our over wintering Blackcaps

Forget-me-knot corner

The other major plant in our Garden is a Hawthorn again planted as a 2ft high whip at the same time as the Rowan which has spread out and again is almost 20ft high, it also produces large amounts of Blossom and Berries. Hawthorn is a very important plant in the countryside supporting numerous insects and birds, our visiting Blue Tits are always searching the branches for Caterpillars. It is a place of refuge for our Sparrows of which there are loads, they sit in it before heading to the feeders and flee back quick when the Sprawk appears!

The Hawthorn,

Hawthorn Blossom

The area in front of the Hawthorn has been sown with wildflower seed and Beebombs again doesn't look much at the moment but has plants such as Birdsfoot Trefoil, Oxide Daisies and many I don't know the name of, it is a magnet for Bees, Butterflies and many other Bugs. It also has Teasels, now I like a Teasel, the flowers are excellent for Bees and the Seed Heads a favourite for Goldfinches and although we only have occasionally visits from Goldies I did on a red letter day get a picture of a Goldfinch on OUR Teasels. Margie however is not a fan as she keeps treading on the prickly leaves!!

Goldfinch on Teasel

We don't mow our lawn much, not as alleged, down to my latent laziness but to allow wildflowers to thrive, mainly Clover, Daisies and Forget-me-knots which are again favourites with the Bees, we used to have Ivy on our back fence which was excellent covered in Bees when in flower and the Birds loved the berries but unfortunately the owners of the building behind decided to slash it down along with the Bird Cherry tree, on the plus side the Honeysuckle,Wild Rose and the Winter Jasmine have taken advantage are slowly taking over and we have planted a replacement Bird Cherry on our side of the fence which seems to be flourishing and is covered in Blossom, the Blackcaps love the small berries.

Bird Cherry

Bee Hotel always seems busy, but may need an upgrade

Honeysuckle et al replacing the destroyed Ivy

Our garden is in a suburban area the nearest, fields or woods or several streets away most of the gardens around us have been paved or are just lawn, but we get some good stuff here, I like to think we are a green oasis in the desert!! Obviously people garden for many reasons traditionally for flowers, this of course can lead to a war on the insects that feed on them sprays and slug pellets cause havoc, other people pave them over for parking or ease of maintenance, others play areas for kids with trampolines and all sorts, all of course legitimate uses, although I personally believe that pesticides, herbicides, fungicides etc shouldn't be on sale to the general public. Our plants are mostly natives that we have planted or have seeded themselves although we have a buddleia which brings in the Butterflies, they are there to create the ecosystem for invertebrates to thrive this in turn brings in the birds, there is always something of interest to see. I highly recommend this form of gardening it is easy, basically mow the lawn a couple of times a year and top up the pond from the water butt occasionally!!

If more people turned their Garden or part of their Garden into a wildlife garden our wildlife would benefit massively, do you really need miles of sterile grass or worse plastic grass, if you have kids they will be stimulated and interested by the bugs and wildlife that appears also Frogs are awesome!!

We feed the birds, mainly Sparrows, Blue Tits and Starlings, the Sparrows have bred in the Terrace Box on the side of our house the last couple of years but this year the Blue Tits seem to have taken over one of the holes be interesting to see how they get on. We have a pair of Robins, a Pair of Dunnocks, 3 Woodpigeons that seem to spend the whole time chasing each other, a pair of Collared Doves, some Feral Pigeons visit occasionally, Blackcaps over winter and a wren appears every now and then. In the winter we get Great Tits, Long-tailed Tits and the odd visit from Greenfinch, Goldfinch and of course up to three Sparrowhawks visited last winter though not seen them lately, think I've only seen the catch one Sparrow though lots of failed attacks usually thanks to the Hawthorn!