Posted on May 31, 2010 - by Denise

Update on the garden wildlife

Well, it’s been a fascinating few weeks in my garden. So much so that I regularly stand by my kitchen window and totally lose track of time watching the soap opera of events taking place. Firstly, let’s go back to a few months ago…

I have to stand corrected over a couple of issues. This time last year I bought a bird feeder with small holes, because I thought that would make the food accessible only to smaller birds. There were a few visitors, but after observing, I thought they seemed to be struggling to get the food out. So, I bought one with bigger holes. If I stand and watch for a minute now I can pretty much guarantee that I will see at least two small birds. I sometimes see up to ten, on the feeders and waiting for their turn.

Last year, I left out some fat balls, which were ignored, but I tried again this year and they are without a doubt the favourite of the tits and the sparrows. Unfortunately, the starlings and rooks have discovered them now, even though I have tried to tuck them deep within a bush to make access to the larger birds difficult. I often see a rook flying away from that bush with a very enlarged crop.

The cage I was using to try to give smaller birds an area to ground feed without the food being monopolised by the starlings has now failed to keep them out:

Then, I started to get a bit concerned because the starlings, which have been nesting in the eaves of what seems to be every house in the street, have been successful in raising many large chicks…

…that have started to come into the garden for a feed:

Although they are looking healthy, they are definitely still a bit clumsy (I’ve witnessed a few crash landings) and I don’t want them to get stuck in the cage. So, that is now gone.

We have had many house sparrow chicks too:

… which is a first for the garden and I’m pleased to see that the dunnock also has at least one chick:

I haven’t seen any blackbird chicks but the adults still come to feed in the leaf litter beneath the hedge occasionally and like to come and bathe in the shallow edges of the pond. So, all in all, with sightings of blue-tits, great tits, marsh tits, chaffinches, a goldfinch, blackbirds, robins, dunnocks and hedge sparrows, the plan to try to help them out a bit does appear to be working.

The hedgehog

There was an interesting development today. I have e-mailed the Devon Wildlife Hospital to find out how the hedgehog is doing, but have not received a reply. I presumed that they must be too busy and thought I would try again this week. I also wondered how easy it is for them to keep track of which hedgehog is which and came from which area, so I suspected it had already been released elsewhere.  However, I have been watching the edge of my garden closely because there is a hedgehog-sized tunnel going underneath our garden fence. I got the hedgehog box out from underneath the hedge to check it was OK and it felt quite heavy. There was a hedgehog just inside the entrance! So, I guess, I shouldn’t get the other one back after all. I am very impressed though by how much of a stronghold the local area seems to be for this too rapidly diminishing species though.

The effort (although it’s one of those things that is so engrossing that it doesn’t feel like work) will continue. I did contradict myself last week by putting tap water in the pond, which, while I was away, had become a pile of mud at the bottom with struggling, wriggling tadpoles after the water had evaporated, so I’m not sure if that has damaged the wildlife with the chemicals in it. I will watch closely.

With this year being the International Year of Biodiversity, my pledge is to try to encourage more bees. The first step will be to plant some foxgloves. I’m going to research the rest. I’ve already got a few good plants, such as ice plant, allium and buddleia, but want to plant a lot more. After all, supplementing the food of the wildlife is good, but I’m sure all of the animals would prefer it if they didn’t have to rely on me coming out to replenish the food every day.