An Unexpected Treat!

We had a major rarity at the bird feeders today. A statement like that is likely to get the mind all a-buzz with potential exotic species that may occasionally pop up. Did some Waxwings stop by? How about an unusual finch of some sort?

No, our major rarity was probably the last species you would think of; it was House Sparrow. Indeed, three of them, which is even more remarkable. Since we moved into our current house just over a year ago, we've been rather saddened by the complete lack of House Sparrows, chirping cheerfully from the guttering as they have done from pretty much every other place I have ever lived. Much maligned for being a 'pest', our humble House Sparrow is a species in catastrophic decline in the UK, with a number of national research surveys from the RSPB and BTO showing staggering declines over the past 25-30 years and this species is now on the Red List as a species of Conservation Concern.

Changes in agricultural policy as well as the effects of air-borne pollution from traffic are implicated in early work on the reasons for this huge decline but research continues into the reasons which will doubtless involve a number of issues. We sometimes hear one or two House Sparrows at the other end of the village when we go on local walks, but they are scarce enough that they rarely make it down to us and this is only the third time we have recorded them in the garden over the past year.

It does seem telling that at one time, we would fashion nestboxes to be 'sparrow-proof' to keep the little devils at bay, but now you can buy specially-constructed boxes in an effort to try and reverse the decline of this bird that is at one and the same time, much loved, but much maligned.

Three's a crowd! Our House Sparrows today on the fatball feeder (a second male is around the back with his tail sticking out at bottom left).

Making a Difference

In this blog, we aim to make a difference - it's a simple as that! As the British countryside becomes more and more impoverished by unsympathetic management and the increasing pressures of an ever-increasing human population, one of the things we can do is to abandon our thoughts of neat lawns and regimental rows of bedding plants and try to turn our gardens into more welcoming places for wildlife.

Just over a year ago, we moved into a property with a half acre of established garden. It's a lovely garden, with plenty of trees and shrubs and already quite a nice range of wildlife, but we aim to improve it. So this blog aims to highlight the species that we find on our half acre and hopefully over time, to record the increases in species that we find due to careful switching of habitat from fully ornamental (as it is now) to something more akin to a semi-natural habitat. We hope you enjoy the ride!!

So here we are, early January - out with the old and in with the new...

Nothing says 'out with the old' more clearly than fire. But this is a managed fire, to get rid of an over abundance of old plant material so that we can get on top of things a little. We'll never just set fire to piles of dead stuff either, as you never know who might be wintering there. Everything has been moved twice and well and truly shaken out, to spare as much as we can before the burn.

'In with the new' begins even before the turn of our calendar year - already our lawn area is sprouting a mass of crinkly leaf rosettes - Primroses will start off our plant species list!

And as for the old garden bench! Well, it's become an ecosystem in its own right now, to the point where we just can't bring ourselves to sit on it! Lichens are complex organisms, formed from a close association between fungi, algae, bacteria and who knows what else; each association gets given a scientific name - but I'll need to leave the identification to Megan!