Our Garden Fare

We have quite a lot of natural garden and encourage the birds by feeding, especially in the winter, and our two small ponds also attract them. Regular garden visitors are blackbirds, robins, sparrows, dunnocks, thrushes, wrens, chaffinches, greenfinches, blue tits and great tits (these both nested successfully in the boxes provided). Long-tailed tits came into the garden several times during the winter and spring.

A green woodpecker appears quite often and this spring, for the first time, we saw a spotted woodpecker. Occasionally we have seen a sparrowhawk, a bird that became almost extinct in the early 1960s due to agricultural seed dressings poisoning the prey they fed on. Another sighting was that of a jay with its flamboyant coloured plumage and harsh screech call. A rare visitor this spring was a stoat – larger than a weasel and with a permanent black tip to its tail; it’s a merciless hunter tracking its prey by scent. From time to time we have had hedgehogs in the garden; not recently seen, but there is evidence that they’re still about! We border agricultural land, so not surprisingly, we often see field mice and have had these unwelcome tenants in the roof of our house.

A brown rat has been spotted, especially in and around the hedgerows in the early months of the year. A pair of goldfinches regularly ventures to our ponds – occasionally, two pairs. Each year, the ponds provide an aquatic home for several frogs and many tadpoles – the visiting blackbirds have a taste for these and also the water snails. There is nothing spectacular in the ponds, just the many usual inhabitants such as waterboatmen, pond darters and water beetles. Occasionally we have the pleasure of seeing dragon and damsel flies. In the fields and droves it is lovely to see the many wild flowers, especially the poppies, re-appearing more and more in recent years.

Ruth Small - Co-ordinator