#30DaysWild - Day 4 - Bee friendly

I got impatient today. A couple of months ago, I sowed various varieties of wildflowers in trays (Sky lupin, field scabious, primrose, cowslip, bugle) in the hope that, by now, I would have a number of plants to scatter around the border. How wrong I was; the only plants that seem to have successfully germinated so far have been the lupins, but even most of those have been eaten by slugs. I currently have five of these surviving, but they are too small to risk planting out yet.

I do already have three honeysuckles, a lavendar, two sedums and a few cosmos, but only the cosmos are currently in flower. So, I decided to go and buy some pollinator friendly plants as a ready source of nectar. I was pleased to find the following in my local garden centre:

Scabious (pink mist)

A cultivated variety of scabious rather than the wildflower I was trying to grow, it is still very attractive to pollinators - within minutes of planting out, bees were already visiting the pretty pink flowers. This is a good plant for this time of year and it should continue flowering until the first frosts (fingers crossed).

Geranium (cranesbill)

An actual geranium rather than the plant type that everyone calls 'geranium'. Again, a cultivated variety, but still seems popular with the bumblebees.

Polemonium (Jacob's ladder)

I have to admit that I had never heard of this variety of plant, but just liked it (and it had an RHS perfect for pollinators logo). After doing a bit of researching in hindsight, it also seems that, as well as being a good source of nectar, it is a food plant for some caterpillars. 

The bumblebees were a little fast to photograph, but this little solitary bee (I think?) was very obliging, posing on a few different flowers. If anyone can help with a species specific i.d. I would be very grateful.

#30DaysWild - Day 1 - Wagtail fledglings

This is my first 'official' 30 Days Wild, and I'm hoping to write something every day about my random acts of wildness. Birds are where most of my knowledge lies at present, but I would like to use this month as an opportunity to develop my invertebrate and plant skills. I've always been obsessed with dragonflies, but have never mastered the art of identification. I also really want to teach myself more wildflower names and to identify at least a few species of bees. I do not think I will become an expert in only 30 days, but I'm hoping to make a good start. Saying that, Day 1 has begun with my comfort zone, although I am going to blame the weather for that!

The very un-June-like weather caused us to abandon our grand wildlife plans of venturing to Lakenheath Fen today, but our developing wildlife garden did not disappoint. As I've mentioned previously on my blog, we have recently moved house and now have a garden. Gradually, we are hoping to transform this into a wildlife haven. So far, we have several bird feeders which we brought along from our old flat, and a newly added bird bath. The shrubs and plants I am growing and planting should attract lots of beneficial insects eventually. Birds are our main visitors at present, with some new additions today. Even if the weather has not been spring-like, the bird behaviour certainly has been. We've had two pied wagtail fledglings in our garden for most of the day, either foraging themselves, or chasing one of the parent birds for food. They've been wonderful to watch and have been fairly trusting when we've needed to be outside. They're even more welcome if they are, as it appears from the photo below, feeding on slugs. I'm hoping we'll see more fledgling birds in our garden as the month develops.

Pied wagtail parent feeding a fledgling what appears to be a slug.

Some familiar places and a new local patch!

It's been about six weeks since my last blog update - it's been a bit of a busy time! We moved house during the Easter holiday and are settling in. That means we've said goodbye to our old local patch near the River Wensum and have a new local patch not far from the River Yare. In this update, I'm hoping to sum up our time at our old patch, introduce our new patch and take a tour of a familiar places during the mean time.

The old patch

We've lived in a flat in Norwich close to the River Wensum together for about 3 years. In that time, we've set up bird feeders in the communal gardens - attracting and sustaining quite large numbers of particular species (especially starlings and green finches). In the process we also accidentally created an ideal home for a family of wood mice in hole just beneath the feeding station. On walks around the patch, we've seen otters, woodpeckers, kingfishers and many woodland birds. Although most of the more uncommon species only showed themselves when I wasn't carrying my camera! We've seen a lot of wildlife in what we thought was an unlikely place in the city. I hope that our small population of birds will find ample food sources without us (I'm sure they will). We've also seen lots around our usual wildlife adventure areas, of which we've managed to visit a couple during the moving process...

Foxley Wood - 8th April

Just over a week after we moved to our new house and a few days before returning to work, we decided to escape the boxes, sorting and shopping and go on a hunt for bluebells at Foxley Wood. I had been hearing reports of early bluebells and didn't want to accidentally miss one of my favourite wildlife spectacles. It was a beautifully sunny day, but we hadn't considered quite how wet and muddy it would be after the thunderstorm the previous evening. It prevented us from reaching the bluebell hotspots, but we took comfort in that the patches of bluebells we did find were just coming into bloom. There should be a chance to go back before they are over. Pretty white blossoms adorned some of the trees and the sunshine had brought out a myriad of butterflies: brimstones, commas and peacocks basking and skimming over the unkempt grasses at the edges of the rides. A chiff chaff called in the background, heralding that spring had arrived with him. We stopped before the path became unpassable and listened: a buzzard calling in the background, tits and finches calling too each other. A sense of calm in the chaos of the last few days. 

Our new patch

We're not actually that far away from our old patch, but we are now in a house in the suburbs of Norwich. That means I now have a small garden which is pretty much just lawn at the moment - I'm itching to get started on transforming it into a wildlife haven. The very first thing we did when we arrived (and I really do mean the first thing!) was to put up our bird feeding station and fill it full of the normal delicacies. Not expecting anything for at least a few days, I was pleased that it had been found by a magpie, a pair of collared doves and a pair of woodpigeon within the first day. Not my intended audience, but still a good start. There is a park and a small woodland opposite the front of our house and when hanging washing out (is it sad that I am excited that I can do this?!) I can hear blue, great and coal tits, chaffinches, green finches and gold finches, even a chiff chaff and a green woodpecker, so I knew we'd get some smaller birds eventually. We've now been here for just over two weeks and we have regularly visiting birds which are slowly growing in numbers. The first were a pair of blue tits, then a pair of great tits, now we also have a pair of chaffinches and a robin. Hopefully the other birds I can hear will find their way across too. On walking around our local patch, we've discovered, to our delight that we can walk through the small woodland, which is absolutely filled with bird song. There is a mixture of mature and young trees and daffodils and English bluebells have been planted beneath them. The park leads to a path. On the corner, amongst a few trees, I have found a pair of nuthatches in the same place three times. I've decided I am going to call this 'nuthatch corner'. They are clearly used to people passing because on the third occasion, I took my camera and managed to get some decent shots of one of them.

 I'm hoping to keep updates of the new birds and other creatures that visit our garden and local patch and a record of my wildlife garden improvements - suggestions for plants are most welcome!

Changes of season

During the Easter holiday, we have visited Taunton, Cambridge and a few places in Norfolk. Now, I have already mentioned my first chiff chaff of the year in my blog last week, but there have been substantially more changes that I've been noticing.

The first has been the crocus, one of my favourite flowers, passing its center stage position to the primrose, both wild and cultivated. They have gone from being slightly folorn, like this example in Taunton at the beginning of the two week break, to prolific blooms all over the place now. It goes to show what a significant change only two weeks have made to our plant life.

Unfortunately, these blooms came too late for one of our beehives at school. Although one is big and happy, the other hive seems to have starved, despite us providing it with food. Whilst checking the hives during the holiday, I also saw that our oystercatchers have returned, all three of them. Perhaps we will get see them breed successfully this year...

Other changes have been not only been due to the season, I feel, but perhaps to a change in food availability. Growing up in Cambridge, I can always remember the flocks of house sparrows and starlings we would have in the garden and nesting under the tiles of the house next door, along with a few blue and great tits. Now, my parents garden is host to a full range of birds, 15 species I counted on our Easter weekend visit, including a male black cap; a bird I rarely see and one neither of my parents had ever seen before. Is this due only to my suggestion of putting out sunflower hearts as a food source? Or is it due to the development of areas of previously 'un-utilised' land that has driven them into the city and gardens for food?

Our birdfeeders outside our flat in Norwich are bursting with life now too. The green finches have returned post winter; we have at least two healthy looking pairs, with squabbling males and nonchalant females, with the odd copulation on the fence. A few goldfinches have finally crept back in after the winter months, and our first ever chaffinches, who are clearly not used to using bird feeders, have arrived. I was distracted from my school work only a few days ago by a feisty long tailed tit who had decided to perch on the window frame and peck at our windows, sounding like he was asking to be let in.

I'm looking forward to the arrival of more birds as the migrants continue to arrive, but the botanical spectacle I'm now waiting for is the explosion of bluebells at Foxley Woods...