Month: February 2020

National Nest Box Week 2020

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It’s National Nest Box Week again, a time to encourage everyone to put up nest boxes in their gardens if they can. You can find out more and get lots of useful tips at: https://www.nestboxweek.com/

We have several nest boxes in the garden, although they don’t seem to get used much sadly. Knowing it was National Nest Box Week coming up, I decided to plug in the camera we have in one (so far unused) blue tit box. I hadn’t checked this particular box for a while as nothing ever seemed to happen in it. So I was thrilled when I connected the camera one evening last week and got this:

A blue tit was using the box as a night time roost. We thought maybe it would just turn out to be a one-off event, but he or she has been back every night since, which is fantastic. Every night it arrives around 5pm just before it gets dark. The camera trigger is too slow to capture it actually coming in through the hole, but it catches it settling in for the night. Initially there’s always a bit of bobbing up and down and checking round the box, presumably as it decides whether it is still a safe place for the night.

The nights themselves aren’t as restful as I imagined they would be. There is an awful lot of fidgeting about and preening, but I suppose it’s a safe time and place to be doing that.

In the morning there is always a bit of stretching and bobbing up and down. It looks as if it’s trying to peer out of the hole to see if it is safe or perhaps just listening for any threats, before it hops up, has a final look around then flies off for the day.

The nights are still pretty cold for a small bird in an uninsulated box. The blue tit copes by fluffing up its feathers to create insulating air pockets. When the bird arrives in the box each night it starts of looking fairly sleek with feathers smooth against its body. As it settles down it fluffs up its downy under feathers – in the next video you can pretty well see it increasing in size as it fluffs up until it is an almost round ball of feathers. Another trick to keep warm is that it then tucks its head under a wing while it sleeps.

So of course now our Blue Tit (we’re calling him Peter after Blue Peter) is visiting regularly, we’re getting our hopes up that perhaps this will finally be the year we capture nesting action on video. We live in hope, but at least if nothing else we have provided a safe roosting space by putting up the nest box.

We’ve got a couple of new nest boxes to put up this year thanks to our lovely gardener Gwyndaf. One has a small hole in a solid front for blue tits or similar and the other is more open fronted – ideal for robins. Just need to find suitable spots to put them out of reach of the neighbours’ cats.

Further afield we are once again sponsoring a nest box through Worcestershire Wildlife Trust’s Rent-a-Nest scheme. We’ve been sponsoring the same nest for a couple of years now. The first year it had a family of blue tits that successfully fledged. Last year it was empty, but at least the money went to support the reserve it’s on (Knapp & Papermill Reserve) so still worth it. Fingers crossed it gets used this year though.

Although National Nest Box Week is primarily aimed at birds, I see no reason not to include other types of nest box – hedgehogs of course! If you’ve got space in your garden why not consider putting in a hedgehog house. Provide a safe dry house for them to build their nests in.

You can buy ready-made hedgehog houses (lots of online options or larger pet shops) or you can build your own. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society has an excellent leaflet with designs for building your own:

Hedgehog Homes

Watching a hedgehog making use of a home you’ve put out for it has to be one of the most rewarding things to do in your garden.

New Pond!

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Excited doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel this week – we’ve got a new pond! I’ve been promising to do it for years now and finally we’ve done it! When I say “we” it is in the loosest sense of the word – as in it wasn’t me at all. Our lovely friend and Cycling Gardener, Gwyndaf came and did all the hard work while I flounced about the garden excitedly but pretty much ineffectually. Let’s hope the wildlife appreciates all Gwyndaf’s hard work.

So here is the obligatory “before” photo – a fairly sunny spot near the fence in an area that had once been a veg patch but has long since been a weed patch.

Unusually for one of my ideas, I actually tried to do a bit of research rather than just launching into the pond without a plan. All the books explain the need for plenty of shallow areas, with perhaps a small deeper section. I even drew up an actual plan, although I don’t think I’ll win any awards for my draughtsmanship.

Fortunately Gwyndaf managed to interpret my messy scrawls and set to work digging our dream pond. Here are the various stages of digging.

Once dug, the area was checked for any sharp objects, then the pond lined with sand to hopefully prevent any rogue stones poking through.

Next a layer of white underlayer to further protect against punctures, then the final EPDM rubber lining. It was a big relief when the lining was down to find we had measured up correctly and got a big enough liner.

Next essential element was of course water. All the books say to avoid tap water. We emptied the water butt which provided just enough water to fill the central deep section, but little more. I was terrified some poor animal would fall in and get trapped at this stage, so rigged up some hessian “ladders” so that anything falling in could crawl out.

Fortunately we live on the beautiful Malvern Hills – famous for their spring water, so we figured we might as well make use of our local resources. There is a handy well – The Cowleigh Spout – just up the road from us, so I made a few trips filling every available water container to fill the pond a bit further.

The UK was then battered this weekend by Storm Ciara, bad news for a lot of people, but good news when you’re trying to fill a pond. The downpours not only topped up the pond directly, but repeatedly filled the water butt again.

The pond now has the all important sloping beach one end, to allow anything that falls in to climb back out again. I’ve been particularly worried in case any of our hedgehogs took a dive, but now they should be able to get out easily. There are shallow areas for birds to bathe in and (fingers crossed) for amphibians to get loved up in.

We wanted to plant the pond up with native plants to give as natural a feel as possible and promote as much wildlife as possible. Although there are lots of online suppliers, it turns out February is not a good time to be buying pond plants as most are dormant for the winter. We did manage to source some Hornwort, which floats about oxygenating the water. A few others we’ve got as tiny plug plants – Purple Loosestrife, Flowering Rush, Marsh Marigolds and Woundwort and Brooklime. Still waiting for a few more to arrive, but hopefully we should end up with a good mix of marginals, floating and emergent plants to encourage an equally good mix of wildlife.

So here it is in all its half finished glory:

There’s still a lot of work to do finishing it off – hiding the liner edges, more planting in and around the pond, but hopefully by the summer we should have a proper wildlife pond again. In the meantime we’ve had our first wildlife visitor to the new pond. It may only be a pigeon, but it’s using the pond and it’s made me very happy!

Expect to see a lot more pondy posts!