The seeds are in

My wildlife patch is really coming on well now. Every weekend, I am making adjustments and adding things to it. This weekend, the seeds for my wild flowers went in. The weather was perfect so it was a good day for it. I find that a lot of seeds need to be planted in September and October to flower in the spring and summer. If I can find any more seeds that need to be planted at this time of year, I should make the most of the weather and plant them soon.

There were a variety of different kinds of seeds. Some of them are being started off in pots and others have gone straight into the ground. They all take different lengths of time to germinate too, so its all a little bit disorganised. However, I do know that they have a good chance of doing well as my dad helped me to plant them. I have tried to grow vegetables in the past on my own, but the seeds didn't germinate. Lets just say that I put them a bit deep in the soil!

So what have I planted? Get ready because its a long list: Poppys, Bluebells, Corncockles, Ox-eye daisies, Cowslips, Corn Marigolds, Primroses and Snake's head fritilary. I am also going to plant some Allium bulbs soon. They all needed planting now, so that they flower at the right time. I knew that I was going to need help planting all this but I really wasn't expecting sowing instructions that were completely different from plant to plant. The most stubborn of all was the Snake's head fritilary (pictured below). The pots show just how complicated the mixture is.

I was a little shocked when I saw on the seed packet that Snake's head fritilary seeds can take up to a year to germinate. I won't be seeing anything any time soon! Not only this, but they needed course grit and seed compost to grow in. At this point, I was beginning to think what fussy plants these are. I have to say that the picture on the packet partly makes up for it. They should, if they grow healthily really look the part in my patch.

I am guessing that wild flowers are generally higher maintenance than some of the easy-grow bulbs and seeds that you can get. I am planning to buy some more seeds too. I have to say that this is mostly because I want the patch to be my own plants and not the usual weeds that accommodate themselves there. Once there are actually growing flowers there, the weeds should find it more difficult to seed themselves there.

One of the seed packets was a variety selection. These ones were generally easy to grow and don't take too long to germinate. When we moved in, I think we already had the Ox-eye daisies growing naturally at the end of our garden. They aren't there any more, so it will be nice to grow them in my patch. Hopefully the seeds will spread themselves over other parts of the garden too. I am familiar with all the other flowers in the packet, but haven't grown them before. It would be a real treat if they could attract some more bees and butterflies to the garden too.

Now, all I have to do is water them and watch them grow. Unfortunately the weather has taken a turn for the worst here, and we have had steady rain all day. I hope this won't rot the seeds before they have even had a chance to grow! I also hope that I will be able to weed some more of the patch this weekend and start looking at a water feature to go here, and a pond to go elsewhere in my garden. It really is busy busy busy!

All photos taken in my garden on 28/09/08

A crisp autumn morning

And a walk around my garden to get photos of visiting birds. I say that its autumn but the weather isn't agreeing. It has been warm and sunny for about a week here now. Even if you go outside with the garden birds, some of the tamer visitors will say a good morning to you. Especially the Robin in the photos below. Its nice to see these visitors in the morning and to hear their song. The Robin especially has a very distinctive song that is recognised by gardeners all over the UK. There is no match for the sight of a Robin sat on a favourite perch singing his/her heart out. These one was very friendly and sat on a fence post at the end of our garden while I took pictures.


This Robin took a bite to eat after I filled the bird feeders up. As always they are the first birds to return after I have filled up. I should get up early one day and watch the birds. I am sure that there are some rarer species visit at this time. I did do this once and I saw a Bullfinch feeding briefly. People have recommended the dawn chorus too but this I haven't done. I am sure that the Robin would be one of the features of this.

In this country the Robin is a very friendly bird that will happily feed near man. But on Wikipedia earlier I found that actually they are quite timid on the continent. You learn a new thing every day! Soon, I should get some more mealworms for the Robins to feed on. They love them and they are great for the juveniles. The only problem is that I am struggling to find a place to put them so that A) they don't get rained on and B) the larger birds don't take them all.

The Blue Tit is another bird I saw this morning. They are a bit more elusive than the Robin above, but will still quite happily take seed from the feeders while I am out. They are very active and although they are very common they can be difficult to photograph. I find that when the Blue Tits feed, other members of the tit family follow suit, as did the Great Tits this morning. They make a harsher noise than the Robins but its nice nonetheless. Around our area the Blue Tits fly around in flocks, flying from feeding station to feeding station.

Autumn "officially" starts in late September and finishes in November . I think this seems about right so far this year. The first leaf has fallen from our apricot tree and the apples in the apple tree are dropping to the ground too. The falling leaves are the stereotypical signs that autumn has begun. In previous years this has been quite inconsistent with poor summers and sunny autumns. But certainly in our garden autumn has begun!

The Blue Tit was very neat. They must have just finished moulting. It won't be too long before we start seeing some frantic pairing up and nest site investigation from these little birds. They won't look like this for too long!

I realise that I haven't really posted much about plants recently. I do have something lined up though. The birds have been spending a lot of time at our feeders recently so I thought I would focus on them a bit more. What is it like in your garden this autumn? I reckon that this part of the UK is a bit further ahead of Northern England and Scotland. Finally I will leave you with couple of the autumn pictures I took today. Enjoy!

Blue Tit and Robin photographs were taken in my garden on 27/09/08. Yellow leaf and rotting apple pics were taken on 28/09/08.

A Jay today

Well actually I didn't see a Jay today as suggested in the title, but I wanted it to rhyme! I saw it on the day I got the footage of the squirrel. This is a new garden bird to me. In case you didn't know Jays are members of the crow family. They are much more shy and secretive than the more common Magpies and Carrion Crows we normally get in our garden. They are woodland birds really, so it was a pleasant surprise to see it fly into our tall conifer. Our conifers are very tall and the tops are often good perches for passing birds. Just last week a Sparrowhawk was perched there and flocks of Starlings visit too. But never a Jay.

It was a brief visit too. It was there less than a minute so no photos, I'm afraid. It was also a bit too far away for my camera to cope with. I have seen this bird before but I have to say that despite their colour, this bird can be very hard to spot. I was begging for it to fly down onto the bird table so that I could get some close-up pictures but I don't think it was convinced. I only saw it because I happened to be looking out of the window at the time when it came. What luck! Come to think of it, there are probably plenty of birds that pass by unnoticed...

I have seen plenty of other posts from other blogs on them too. If only my dad's binoculars were able to take photos. They are excellent and let in a lot of light, meaning that I saw the Jay in its full colours. They are unmistakable when you see them. The blue streak on their wings is the give-away for me. If you want to see a picture of one on wikipedia, click here. Also on wikipedia it mentions their ability to mimic other birds, which can make it very hard to distinguish its identity.

I thought this post would be a bit dry without any images, so I thought I would share some of my recent Goldfinch photos. Now, you may have noticed that quite a few of my posts are based on these birds. OK, hands up its because these birds are simply some of the easiest and most colourful birds that visit my garden. They are surprisingly tame compared with the Greenfinch and Chaffinch. They also spend more time at the feeders than quite a lot of our other garden birds. Its interesting to look at the behaviour of birds. For example over the years I have noticed that the Blue Tits will often take a seed and fly off into a bush with it to break it up. Unlike the Greenfinches, which are much less likely to give up their spot on the feeders.

Adult Goldfinch


The images below are juvenile Goldfinch ones. This one was actually feeding while I was doing something to my patch, and I was only a few metres away from it. This one even took a quick drink from the bird bath. Its a little disappointing I didn't get better ones but never mind. I am guessing that the young birds are less aware of the dangers in the garden. The adult Goldfinch (also pictured above) was a lot harder to capture.

Juvenile Goldfinch

All photos were taken in my garden on 21/09/08

Pesky squirrels

I went yesterday and today to try and get some capture of birds (which I did get a bit of), but there was another visitor at the end of our garden which I didn't expect. A Grey Squirrel was on one of the branches of the apple tree at the end of our garden. It wasn't actually on the bird feeder, which was surprising. I filmed it while it was on the branch, but it scurried off, presumably because of my presence. I thought that would be the last I would see of it, but I heard some rustling in the tree and it came out again with an apple in its paws. Grrr...




It actually stayed there for quite a while but I didn't want to make the clips too long. It is when you get up close to animals like the Grey Squirrel and the Domestic Cat that you realise just how dominative they are. The birds just don't feed while the squirrel is there. The squirrel must be quite strong as it is able to hold the weight of the apple. It also must have had to take the apple off the branch. These creatures won't be beaten. It amused me when it nearly dropped the large apple, but managed to keep it in its grasps.

I wonder if squirrels feed at night. I must say that I have never seen them in the evenings. On the other hand they are much more secretive than the pigeons that actually manage to feed from the bird feeder by perching on the feeder pole. Before I started this blog, one of the squirrels managed to break our previous nut feeder. We have a more squirrel proof one now, so they struggle to get anything out.

It obviously prefers the apples to the sunflower hearts that I put in the feeders and hanging bird table. I have never seen them eat apples before though. I thought that they primarily ate peanuts and other various foods lying on the woodland floor. To be honest we don't harvest the apple tree anyway so it isn't a disaster that the squirrel is eating them, but they don't half make a mess! The one I was watching ate some of the apple and then just dropped it on the floor.

There was a while in our garden when there were no squirells at all, but they have returned again now. They seem to have definate good breeding years and definate bad breeding years. I would really like to get photos of birds feeding on some of the rotten apples that have fallen from the tree. Blackbirds are probably the most likely garden birds to feed on fallen fruit. I guess the videos above are a start, and are squirrels just as bad as we say they are? After all, they are just doing the same thing as the birds. Feeding to survive.

Patch progress

Today I have been working on my "little" project to try and make an overgrown patch look nicer without disturbing much wildife. See the first post on this click here. It really is hard work and I still have a lot to do, but as you will discover from the pictures below it already looks completely different to before. The good weather helped too! We were able to eat lunch outside which hasn't happened in a while.




So, what have I actually done. Well, this morning we took a trip to homebase to get some plants for my patch. I then had the seemingly impossible task of weeding the patch. I am trying to do it bit by bit so that I cause minimal damage to the wildlife there. I cleared it eventually and I have to say that it is probaly the neatest it is ever going to look. So for now, I have only weeded about 1/3 of it. It still looks a lot neater than it did before. I then added some compost to the patch which should help the wild flowers when I plant them. Also the soil that is already there is chalky with stones, so the plants would have struggled to grow healthily. After this I mixed the soil up and turned it over. I then put the plants in the patch. At the moment the plants are quite small but they are supposed to grow quite big. When they are a bit bigger it should hopefully make it look a bit more wild, and start to attract the lizards back to this area.

The picture below shows the overall progress of the project.

The plants that I bought at Homebase toady are quite different to each other, but I think that they will look ok in the patch when they have grown. I tried to pick some that would not look out of place in the area. There are 2 grassy-type plants. One of them has thin "branches" and the other has some hairy seed heads that I thought looked quite nice. There is also a small green bushy plant. The last is a dark purpleish colour which I thought would make a nice change to the weeds and green plants.

The image on the left shows the seed head of one of the plants. I am quite fond of the plants in the picture above but I hope to get some more plants from a proper garden centre. I have decided a different location for our pond. This is because I have seen frogs around a different area the most. But I am hoping to get a water feature for my patch now, which might attract the birds and give them the opportunity to wash themselves. I must also buy some pond lining to go in my new location.

I have some wild flower seeds too, which need to be started off in trays or small pots and then transplanted into my patch. In the picture on the left below, it shows the area already covered by my new plants. The water feature is planned for the middle of this strip and the wild flowers should fit in at the end. I am hoping that the good weather carries on for these new plants to develop ok.
I have changed the font for my blog now and hopefully it should make the presentation a bit better.
All photos were taken in my garden on 20/09/08

Here's the frog but where is the water

Another slimy animal to post about. But this new animal, unlike the snails I wrote about on Friday doesn't leave holes in dad's lettuce or make a horribly unmistakable crunching noise when accidently stood on in the dark. In fact these creatures don't make a great deal of noise. But who am I? A slug? Of course not. A Common Frog. But not any old frog. A frog which was, unusually found no where near water.

We were just clearing the long grass near the fence when a large frog jumped out of the overgrowth onto a low wall nearby. It was clearly aware of our presence and froze there. It stayed there for a while which allowed me to take a few pictures of it. After that, we let it hop away back into the grass. We certainly decided not to cut the long grass any more for the time being.

So the question is, what was actually doing there. Well, we have seen frogs in similar environments in other parts of the garden too. But again, not a pond in sight (although I intend to get one soon). It must have come from a pond or stream but I can't think of anywhere nearby where there is one. I am definately not an expert on frogs and other amphibians, and I still have a lot to learn, but I do know that frogs' eggs are laid in water and float. So where on earth has this one come from?

Maybe it made the dangerous voyage accross the railway line from a pond, or hopped miles from the nearest little stream. I simply didn't know. I thought and thought and thought until every brain cell was worn out. I came up with only one more idea. It could have come from the sewers, or drainpipes somewhere.

Let the pictures make up your mind!

Not just the birds that like it

In the evenings, I lock our pet rabbits up in their hutch for the night to prevent them from being eaten by foxes. It was an average evening at about 10:00pm and I spotted some blobs on the fat block feeder. I shone my torch on them to get a better view only to see that they were actually snails!

Above: plenty of snails, earwigs and woodlice (Not for the squeamish type)

And there weren't just snails either. Earwigs and woodlice too. Its lucky they were snails, because it gave me a chance to get my camera before they disappeared. Its a wonder I had never noticed them before. I'm not sure if this has been known to happen before, but I must admit that I never knew that some of our bird food was being eaten by snails. They obviously have similar tastes to our garden birds. There were quite a few of them too. They must only eat very tiny portions of it though because in the morning, I could honestly not notice that any of the fat had gone. I thought that snails were only interested in green plants in the garden. Clearly not!

I have seen some of our daytime pests, eg squirrels. I am guessing that these snails, earwigs and woodlice are trying to avoid being eaten by their predators. The squirrels certainly make themselves obvious by rustling loudly in the trees and scaring the birds off. The creatures seem to be a bit more discreet. If you look carefully, you will spot some woodlice on the fence in the picture below.

Please comment if you have had any similar experiences. I definately found this strange.

Messy for us, but not for wildlife

In our garden, I like to keep a little part untidy for wildlife. We have a compost heap, and a patch of overgrown weeds. Earlier on, I went outside to photograph this area to give you an idea of how messy it actually looks. At any one time, we have seen 6 Common Lizards, mostly seen on a little opening on the right of the patch. At the moment, the patch is mostly made up of various grasses (which we didn't plant). This attracts all sorts of wildlife, and is a great haven. It is in full sunlight and is completely open to the elements, so it is not only good for the overgrowth, but its also good for basking lizards. We occaisionally see frogs there too, despite there not being much moisture. Various insects and slowworms quite frequently seen too. Thank you to Shirl for the montage instructions, which I have used for the montage below.


On BBC Springwatch, they are always advising you to leave some space in the garden to go wild. I completely agree, and in a way, it makes the garden look more interesting. However, I do intend to make this area a little bit neater, as you will understand as you see the photos above. Next year I am hoping to be able to put a small pond in this small space, along with some wild flowers and possibly a fruit bush. I am hoping I can do this without disturbing any of the existing wildlife. The plan is to do it bit by bit, so that I cause minimal damage to the willdife. I think I will try to improve the basking area for the lizards too. I have to say that it is a complete contrast to the neat vegetable patch with runner beans on the left.

Hmm... I don't really want to leave it too long before I do a bit of maintenance to the patch, because it will become an impossible task to weed it! Actually, looking after some weeds, and a few bits of rotting wood and rocks is far easier to manage than I thought, and I really do reccommend that you try it!

Garden birds update

Its almost like a circus outside at the moment with the birds. We are getting large flocks of tits, especially Blue and Long-tailed. Yesterday, there were 7 Long-tailed tits, and 6 Blue Tits, along with 4 Greenfinches, 2 Goldfinches, 4 Chaffinches, 1 Goldcrest, 2 Great Tits, 2 Coal Tits, 2 Dunnocks, 2 Robins, and of course the usual pigeons, doves and magpies. They seem to fly from feeding station to feeding station, eating as much as they can. I think most of our birds have finished their moulting for the year, and the feeders are needing constant refills. I would really like to get a picture of the tiny visiting Goldcrest, but because the are so small, it means I have to try and get close to them. So I decided to stick to the more common birds this time! Fat is the best food to attract Long-tailed tits, and the one below is enjoying some of our fat block.

The quality of the video isn't as good as normal because it is taken through glass, and it was raining outside.

The Goldcrest that is visiting occaisionally at the moment is very shy and its difficult to get close up to them. They don't take food from the feeding stations, but they seem to like the conifer tree at the end of our garden. Its amazing to think how small the nest of this bird will be. I looked the Goldcrest up in a bird book, and it does say that they are likely to nest in conifer trees. Fingers crossed that we get them nesting in our garden. Talking of nests, I was planning to, at some point get a Camera Nestbox or Feeder cam. The trouble is that they are mostly quite expensive. Any suggestions?

Just a quick note on the weather. It has been awful here over the last week or so, making the return to school seem even more tedious. It has got to be something to do with global warming, because this isn't the way I normally remember summer!

Swimming Snakes!

I went down to the south coast last Friday and Saturday, and we spent a day around the Titchfield Haven nature reserve. We fed the ducks for a while, off the top of a bridge. They were very hungry, so it was a good job we had quite a lot of duck seed. The image below shows 2 female Tufted Ducks. They are less tame than the greedy Mallards, and took less of the food too. The reserve is marshy, and has a wide variety of birds. Unfortunately, we didn't have the chance to go around properly.

But as we were feeding the ducks, my dad spotted something swimming across the water that I thought was an eel at first (I am new to waterlife). But it was in fact a Grass Snake. My face was probably hysterical when I saw it and was trying to get my camera out frantically. I did just manage to get a picture of it before it swam annoyingly into the reeds. The strange thing was that the ducks followed the snake in the water. Maybe it was safety in numbers! The picture is quite blurred, and you can only just see the snake swimming in the murky water. At the time we didn't know what it was, but after looking in a wildlife book in the visitor centre, we concluded that it was a Grass Snake. If you look carefully, the snake is in the middle of the picture.