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.