End of year wildlife report - our first year in our first (owned home).

I promised a first year report at the beginning of September 2012 – so here it is.

Please note I have concentrated on the house itself and gardens of course, and only briefly mentioned the surrounding areas which will be dealt with in a separate blog entry.

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Introduction.

Anna and I picked up the keys to our first (bought) home together on August 9^th 2011 – our third wedding anniversary (exactly), but went on holiday to wonderful wild Turkey in that summer and didn’t actually move house until 1^st September 2011.

We were moving from “Swift Half”, a lovely detached hundred-year old ramshackle house at the edge of southern Reading (eight and a half miles away due west as the crow flies) to a post-war (1953-built) semi-detached ex council town house with a very large back garden and countryside less than half a mile away from the house itself.

“Swift Half” had blue tits nesting in the rotten eaves, as well as house sparrows and of course my favourite bird of all, swifts each year (which I filmed and webcast for two years).

The garden was huge but very overgrown and played host to an old fox earth, a muntjac (once), a couple of hedgehogs, plenty of insect life (attracted by the honeysuckle and mature damson blossom) and of course damselflies, dragonflies, frogs and a large collection of palmate newts (potentially over a hundred) in the small pond.

Bird life was always good at “Swift Half”, with tits and finches all arriving for food – as well as daily hawks, omnipresent kites, the odd rare garden visitor such as a pied or grey wagtail, a family of great spotted woodpeckers, jays, a heron visiting the pond and the occasional buzzard / peregrine / egret overhead.  We even had a hawfinch visit once in the spring – a bird I’ve not seen before or since. Best of all though were the (already mentioned) nesting swifts for three months each year.

We also had lots of butterflies, woodmice, my favourite bees and wasps (blue mason bees and ruby-tailed wasps) and rats (not so sought after) so any new garden we were going to take on would have an awful lot to live up to….

Would it even compete with the incredible wildlife to be found at “Swift Half”?

Well…. I think it already has – and please read on to find out just why I think that…

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The location, garden itself and the lie of the land…

Our new house lies in an old council estate (now wholly privately owned – all the council houses were sold off in the 1990s) at the northern edge of a post-war town in Berkshire.

The area itself is very “standard”… not particularly affluent, (nor not so) and whilst the “delights” of the town are but a 15 minute walk away south, my real delights (real countryside) are probably closer to that, to our north – maybe ten minutes walk at the most.

The front garden of our new house is relatively small and south facing - in estate agent speak “laid mainly to lawn” (moss and red anthills I’d say instead) bordered by a low privet hedge with a large dead hornbeam threatening to lean onto the front corner of the house, and a ceanothus bush against the front side of our outbuildings (where most might have a garage perhaps).

We don’t have a drive (yet) and park on the road outside our house when we can (and parents aren’t picking up their snotty little screaming kids from the school opposite). The benefit from living opposite a school is that you are never overlooked in the evenings, or weekends or school holidays – so whilst some might say living by a school is noisy – I’d say the reverse is actually the truth, especially when all your neighbours are octogenarians (or pushing that way) – our garden is very, very peaceful when we are at home - a real sanctuary!

Open the side door (when we’ve unlocked it from the inside) – and you’ll walk through a side passageway,  pass two outbuildings on your left (full of fridges, golf clubs, tools etc…) and our back door (kitchen) to the right.

Then you’ll walk into the back garden proper. 40 feet wide and 110 feet long. Running north (looking from the house) but also facing south (as it slopes gently back down to the house from back of the garden to the house itself). So we have a north-pointing, south-facing garden to be exact…

The old lady that we bought the house from was clearly no gardener, and whilst the majority of the back garden was “laid to lawn” (thick moss mainly), both borders were horrendously overgrown with woody shrubs and rambling roses that has been left for over fifty years (shattering the cheap panel fences on both sides).

At the back of the back garden (at the top end or northern end) is situated a row of brick garages – although all you see from the garden is a brick wall with garage roofs on top. These garages were completely covered with up to 15 foot of overgrown woody shrubs again when we moved in – so much so that we were “missing” 600 square feet of garden when we moved in - a bigger area than most people’s gardens in totality!

The rear garden has a decrepit “lean to” by the house and outbuildings and several mature trees  - three large leylandii and a large hybrid poplar dominate the garden, but there are also other trees and shrubs including a nice photinia, a gnarled apple tree, a flowering cherry (two in fact) and several ash and damson trees.

The garden certainly had potential when we moved in – it just needed a little, no… a LOT of TLC and thought if we were to make it secure, neat(ish) and wildlife friendly.

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The work we’ve done in the garden throughout the first year.

I spent the winter designing and building a “swift palace” in the attic of our new home (drilling through the wall of the attic to give any swifts access to the attic itself, as I knew I’d really miss our nesting swifts since moving from “Swift Half”. More on this in the wildlife report below…

Because of the lie of the land (above) a south facing garden down to the house, because it has become clear that there’s plenty of flint and rubble under the heavy clay soil and because of the fact that our “soakaway” which flooded repetitively in the autumn of 2011 was not a soakaway at all, but a broken and un-mapped surface water drain, our first job in the garden was to fix the drains.

A lot of the bottom of the garden was dug up with a mini digger shortly after moving in (in a wet October) and this damaged the lawn for most of the year – in fact for a few months we had no option to cover a third of our lawn with orange plastic builders’ fencing to prevent us or our hens damaging the lawn even more..

We also replaced the leaking gutters, soffits and fascias, and in doing so, had no option but to destroy at least one large wasp nest and several squirrel winter dreys (no problem with that – I am no grey squirrel fan).

I took hand and power tools to the garden’s overgrown shrubbery and cut pretty-well everything down to the ground – twice.  I’ve always wanted my own wildlife garden and a garden populated by “old woman’s” lupins and roses really does nothing for wildlife (although she did have quite a lot of invasive yellow “golden rod” flowers which the bees adore – more on that later) – I needed to start afresh and give the saplings and struggling trees some air and light.

We’ve completely re-fenced the back garden in a nice brown larch (no panels – feather edged timber and arris rails) and in the process got our neighbours to severely trim back their half-century old rhododendrons and honeysuckle which had both smashed through the fence panels, encroached a good 6 feet into our garden and started to throttle our mock orange tree.

Sure, in the process of all this cutting down and neatening up we’ve lost a lot of cover  (the garden is a tiny bit less private than when we moved in , but it’s still incredibly private and quiet for the area)  -  but we can grow that back and unlike the previous owner of the property – manage it properly!

The main cutting back has been at the rear (top) of the back garden with bush after bush (horribly twisted and knotted up) cut down and roots taken up – back breaking work which has taken a lot of time this year   -  but as described earlier, we’ve gained a lot of land this way.

My old walking partner kindly built our hens a proper, full height hen run (so important to give poultry like hens height) in the spring of 2012 and this has been nicely situated in the very NW corner of the garden   - its back wall being the brick garage wall and it even has a clear roof to keep our birds dry.

As I type we have also just turfed and landscaped around the coop – the whole area was swamped in uncontrolled, untended, uncared-for climbers, ramblers and impenetrable bushes a few months ago.

We’ve also already planted some herbs, strawberries, sunflowers, wild flower mix, cornflowers, white valerian a buddleja and two oak trees (one very small given to us by my old walking partner - and one 7 foot sapling which has already produced two acorns).

I’ve mown half the lawn to Welwyn garden city (have you ever been there – the weirdest place I’ve ever visited in the UK!) standard  ½ inch length and kept the other half as a more “wild meadow” area (which turned into a sea of long rye, buttercups, self-heal, white clover and dandelions at various stages throughout the spring and summer).

I’ve now earmarked out a spot for a small pond (8 foot by 6 foot roughly) in the meadow (I miss my newts!) and I’ll try and get that in before the end of the year, so we can fill it with water-butt water over the winter and early spring.

So…. After a year of work in the garden (bear in mind my health has not been good this year and Anna’s not been involved in a lot of this work (for reasons that I hope to make obvious soon enough) we are left with a garden with far less foliage in – but MUCH more potential to turn it into a real wildlife haven (although we’ve hardly been short of wildlife in the garden already, as you can read below…)

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Weather at our new house over the last year – a summary.

After a relatively dry summer, significant rain came in the autumn – filling our newly installed water butts and flooding us a few times before we carried out necessary surface water drainage works.

Then followed a dry, relatively warm winter, with just one or two nights of any significant snow at all in early February (which hung around for the best part of a week due to a cold snap where daytime temperatures struggled to get above 0c for a few days).

February soon warmed up significantly though.

March came and remained hot, sunny and dry throughout the entire month. Because of a distinct lack of rain over the past two years (not sunny so much as just not a lot of replenishing rain during winters) water companies nationwide imposed hosepipe bans for the spring and early summer of 2012.

Of course, as soon as the water companies had banned the use of hosepipes, it rained constantly for the next three months (pretty well) making the three month period of April, May and June 2012 the wettest three month period since records began.

The last week in May 2012 was hot and sunny to be fair, but from early April to mid July, the pattern was one of rain at Atlantic low pressure after low pressure being whipped over the middle of England by an unseasonably* southern tracking jet stream.

*I put this asterisk by the word “unseasonable” as more and more these days (in the past few years) the northern Atlantic jet stream does seem to slip far further south than was ever the norm and sits over southern UK. Some climatologists regard this as an inevitable consequence of climate change – but that has yet to be categorically proven.

As the schools broke up for the summer holidays in mid July 2012, the weather improved again finally and we got (in the main) a few pretty settled, warm weeks with more sun than rain over the SE of England and temperatures again reaching 30c from time to time.

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Wildlife highlights (taken from my daily records)

in the garden – (generally by scientific class).

NB. These are just recorded highlights taken from my spreadsheet record – It’s fair to say I’ve not been in the best health for much of the year and owing to a very wet spring, I’ve not been out and about in the garden nearly as much as I’d have thought – so these highlights represent a fraction of what actually is present I’m sure…

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Insects, spiders and other invertebrates

Considering we’ve pretty well cut down all the old, throttled shrubs and most of the flowering plants in the garden since moving in, leaving just the mature trees, a few flowers and the lawn, we’ve not done too badly for insects.

Red admirals, speckled woods and large white butterflies were present from September 2011 (when we moved in) and we had to destroy at least one common wasp nest in the soffits in order to get the house re-guttered.

Wasps (queen wasps) were present until November in the garden and the red admirals to a similar time of year.

There’s been at least one hornet (probably two) fly through the garden last autumn (I’m unreliably told they nested next door) and a few shieldbugs spotted (mainly when I cut back all the shrubs at the back of the garden) including green shieldbugs, a squash bug and a hawthorn shieldbug - surprising as there are no nettles, no docks and no hawthorn in the garden as I type.

The first moth highlight of the first year came in our first month here – a silver Y moth, attracted by our side passage light at night – and we’ve had a few more silver Y’s lured by the moff trap in late summer.

Ladybirds have been thin on the ground this year – but we’ve had plenty of seven spot ladybirds (which love the ceanothus) and quite a few harlequins.

There are many anthills (red ants and black ants) in the front and rear garden which the green woodpeckers enjoyed before we started 2012 and our first bee highlight came on Anna’s birthday in 2011 – a queen buff-tailed bumblebee patrolling the borders (must have been a warm boxing day in 2011!). She patrolled the garden throughout the Christmas and New Year holiday…

Right at the end of February, as the weather turned very warm (over 20c in February is some temperature) and we got our first sightings of three more bumblebee queens  -  white tailed bumblebee, red-tailed bumblebee and tree bumblebees, which swarmed all over the ceanothus when it flowered. I assume the tree bees nested pretty close to the house, but I never saw the nest itself.

Also in very late February, the hibernating seven spot ladybirds “woke up” and began mating and we got our first and second moff highlight record of 2012 – a grey shoulder knot (emerging from hibernation) and a dotted border moth in our side passage (attracted by the light there – I hadn’t used the moff trap by then).

The red-tailed bumblebees enjoyed our March crocuses and our first queen wasp of 2012 appeared in the first week of a hot, sunny March.

March also brought our first Hebrew character moth (side passage light again) which our new kittens loved chasing around the garden – poor moff!

On 9^th March, after almost two weeks of hot, sunny weather, I set up the battered moff trap and immediately caught more Hebrew characters and common quakers in the newly erected chicken run (to protect the moffs from our cats).

The first butterfly of the new year (2012) arrived in the middle of March, a comma, which was joined a day later by the first brassy mining bees and small leafcutter bee, in the very warm, sunny March.

Red admirals were not long behind the commas, with the first drone fly and the first tawny mining bees – beautiful to find, such striking bees.

The first brimstone butterfly of 2012, the first (male) feather-footed flower bee and the first bee-flies all appeared the last week of March 2012 as did the first tiny zebra spider, the first cabbage white and the first orange tips – these beautiful butterflies would dominate the garden for some time in the warm, sunny early spring.

On the 1^st April we got our first (of many) holly blue butterflies and our first female (black) feather-footed flower bee, which our boisterous male tom kitten, a Bengal called “Arrack” quickly killed and ate.

The first (of many) honey bees arrived in the first week of April 2012, as did the first (of many) speckled woods.

In the middle of April (well into the turned, rainy, cool weather) the first and only recorded nomadic bee was seen (Marsham’s nomadic bee) as was the first yellow-legged mining bee plus my first ever garden cream spot ladybird (something I never saw at “Swift Half”).

By May, the tree bumblebees were all over the rampant ceanothus blossom and the first of the Brimstone moths were being caught in the moff trap, on the rare dry nights and the first of the fourteen spot ladybirds were making their presence known to me.

At the end of May, as the weather suddenly turned very hot indeed (and very sultry to boot), stag beetles both male and female erupted from the rotten wood buried in the garden -  a real treat to see and present in the air and on the ground for a few weeks.

It was during this week also that our first (and only as I write) swarm of relocating honey bees moved slowly through the garden to disappear down the road and set up home somewhere unknown to me – quite a sight and sound (thousands of bees all on the move together).

This week of hot, sultry weather also brought the first ruby-tailed wasps to my attention, another hornet, my first ever “urban” jumping spider, the first mint moth and the first unidentified dragonfly (very possibly a common darter).

It wasn’t until early July that I saw my first common carder bee, checking out our “left meadow” and sown meadow” and my first ever “yellow-faced nectar bees” doing the same.

On the 20^th of July as the weather became sultry again after a few more weeks of cool rain, we had our first flying ant day – inside the house! (They had nested in the sitting room window frame!)

At the end of July, when temperatures nearly exceeded 35c, I set the moff trap up again and caught my first Swallowtail moth at our new house, which was joined by our first (of many) scalloped oaks during the warm nights.

During the hot days at the end of July we had our first ever (garden) Meadow brown butterflies as well as our first gatekeepers.

Right at the end of July, the garden played host to our first “king of hoverflies” (Volucella zonaria) and it wasn’t until the second week of August (months later than I would expect) that I caught sight of our first peacock butterfly in the garden.

By August, the weather had become a little more settled and the honeybees and striped drone flies were swarming all over the the remaining golden rod.

It was at this time that we started to get visited (every day) by large dragonflies, including one female emperor dragonfly (which Arrack caught and killed again), migrant hawkers (I think) and common darters – which seemed to love to hawk around our midgey garden.

In fact the midges were so numerous in the more humid evenings that the air seemed to whine with their sheer numbers!

Come the middle of August and my first ever Splayed deer fly appeared in the garden and attacked me as I mowed the grass.

At the middle- end of the month I had replaced the bulb to the moth trap and set it up again in the coop for a few nights.

This produced an Old lady moth, orange swift moths, a knotgrass, a beautiful carpet moth, dozens of brimstone moths and a few broad-bordered yellow underwings amongst others.

Finally, right at the end of our first recorded 12 months at our (not so) new house, I saw a nice robber fly on the ageing sunflowers and was startled to discover a large black-bodied, green-fanged Mediterranean tube spider (Segestria florentina) living in our side passageway ceiling, we also had my first male oak bush cricket spend the night on our landing ceiling and a young(ish) woodlouse spider crawled along our bedroom skirting board on its futile search for prey.

The woodlouse spider (like S.florentina, the Mediterranean tube spider also recorded at the house this year) is one of the very few spiders in the UK that do at least have the capability of biting humans should the need arise (if they are roughly handled by a ham-fisted human). The bites from both wouldn’t cause more than a little “injection pain” but it does seem that in our new gaff, we are attracting the more “bitey” of my spidey friends….!

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Amphibians and reptiles

As soon as Anna and I got the keys to our new abode (and I immediately ran through the house to explore the garden properly of course!) it was clear that we had an awful lot of common frogs hiding in the overgrown borders of the large garden.

What we didn’t know at the time was that there were (are still) two ponds in neighbouring gardens - one in the next garden to the east and one two gardens away to the west.

Between these ponds lay our untended old garden, full of cover and thick leaf litter, so I guess it should have come as no surprise that dozens and dozens of frogs lay in wait for ourselves plus of course our cats and hens to discover.

Frogs in fact were the first and most numerous animal to be reported on my “wildlife highlights spreadsheet” throughout our first year at the house (September 2011 to August 2012 inclusive) with over 50 entries. (50+ days). Frogs of all shapes and sizes.

Unfortunately many of these frogs were to die as a result of firstly our lovely original tom cat “Malu” (who sadly died very unexpectedly after choking on a kibble a couple of months after we moved in), then Yala (our original long-haired female cat) also three of our hens (“Conker”, “Trouble” and our original girl “Couven” who I had to despatch due to her failing health in the summer of 2012) and finally our two young Bengal kittens “Arrack” and “Elgin”.

Anyone reading this who keeps proper free-range hens will know that they are like little dinosaurs – and take great delight when finding frogs – before chasing each other round the garden and ripping the frog to bits.

The cats all like playing with helpless frogs of course also – many a time during the past 12 months I’ve got out of bed at dawn, to find a dead frog at the foot of the stairs or a kitten tossing a squealing live frog in the air in the sitting room.

We re-fenced the back garden in the summer of 2012 and found a load more wee froglets on the eastern border.

Right until the end of this first year, I found myself still rescuing tiny froglets from the kittens and Yala (who even brings frogs into the garden from over the garages, as a present for the kittens) and placing them very gently under the sheet of corrugated iron I have placed in a patch of thick vegetation and which I now use as my “amphi-home”.

Each time I water under the corrugated iron (frogs are not like toads – they need to keep their skin moist) I’m glad to say that they seem to appreciate being there (they stay there) and I’m hoping with a pond dug in before the end of 2012, very close to the “amphi-home”, the frogs will have somewhere else to hide and breed….

Of course I hope for newts with a pond also…

Let’s just hope the resident heron keeps away…!

As for reptiles, well…no surprise that I’ve seen none in the garden as I write, but now that I’ve provided a nice, warm, sheltered compost heap for them (connected to our neighbour’s slightly wilder heap with a snake tunnel under the fence) next to what will be the site for our new pond – I really hope for grass snakes and slow worms in the years ahead – well… I can dream can’t I?

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Birds

If I could have taken three bird species with me when we moved from “Swift Half” eight and a half miles due east, I’d have had not hesitated to say Swifts, Jays and Sparrowhawks.

Luckily all three were present at our new house at various times of our first twelve months there, although I haven’t managed to get the investigating swifts to nest yet (see below).

The first bird highlight record I have on my 12 month spreadsheet is of sparrowhawk – and we have at least one pair (both male and female) visiting us regularly (probably every day), thanks in the main to us feeding passerines at various times of the year and most of our octogenarian neighbours doing the same, also.

In the first few days of living in our new house I had also spied a couple of kestrels in the air around the house (though they weren’t to stick around).

It wasn’t long before I had heard jays in the locality (alarm calling from the school’s grounds).

In the first week of September 2011 I watched swallows and house martins all migrating south over the house after their breeding season in the UK and on 5^th September 2012 I bore witness to my latest EVER swift in British skies – flying pretty slowly and quit high, due south again.

At the time, this was the latest ever swift I’ve seen in the UK by about four weeks – and an incredible and delightful surprise visitor, welcoming us to our new house after our holiday in wonderful Turkey when I thought I’d seen the last of the UK swifts of 2011!

I kidded myself that it was one of our breeding swifts from our old house coming to say goodbye and thanks (of course this was not the case!)

The swallow and martin migration continued throughout September (peaking at the end of the month with dozens of martins and swallows heading south over the house in large flocks) and by that time I’d also heard green woodpeckers yaffling in the large trees surrounding the very old recreation ground a few hundred yards north of the garden (along with the occasional hoot or scream of a tawny owl or two at dawn at the same location), and mistle thrushes cackling in the large fir trees outside the school opposite the house.

It was September when it first became obvious that our town (and environs) played host to a healthy population of rose-ringed parakeets – which were to enter our garden before too long, to feed from the apple tree (apples and bird feeders) in several afternoons throughout our first twelve months and it also became obvious that red kites, though not as numerous as over “Swift Half” were pretty-well daily visitors over the garden.

As well as kites, I heard buzzards mewing in the air occasionally and saw the first buzzard from the garden in the middle of September. I continued to see buzzards throughout the year, with up to three soaring above the house once, but these sights (of buzzard/s) were not particularly common and often limited to warm sunny days with nice thermals. If we have a warmer, sunnier 2013 I would expect to see more buzzards from the garden I guess.

By early October the local rooftop jackdaws had become obvious to me as permanent members of the locality and I was hearing a chiffchaff (overwintering I assume) singing (strange?) in a neighbours’ garden to the east.

On 11^th October during the afternoon I witnessed the last of the hirundines (swallows) pass south over the house on their way back to Africa.

I wouldn’t see them again for 6 months or so – and on that very day (or night to be exact… on the 11^th October 2011) a few hours after I watched our last swallows leave, I heard our first winter visitors arrive – the definite night time tseep of a migrating redwing. I am not sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen swallows leave the UK on one day and that very night hear redwings arrive.

11^th October marked the start of the redwing influx and over the next few nights I began to hear dozens of these pretty wee thrushes arrive at night.

Malu (our sadly departed tom cat) kindly dispatched a hen blackbird in the middle of October, to make way for the arriving winter thrushes…

A handful of seemingly very tame robins were making their presence known in the garden by October (I have a feeling the old lady we bought the house from hand-fed them) and gaggles of grey geese  and Canada geese passed over just after dark most night, all heading north a mile or two, to their overnight roosting fields.

The last two weeks of October brought our first angry flock of magpies which were very upset with our resident hawk – a beautiful chestnut-coloured female sparrowhawk - certainly the most stunning female hawk I’ve ever seen.

The last two weeks of October also brought me my first garden record of a female great spotted woodpecker, “chipping” from one of our old damson trees, ‘though I had heard these piebald woodpeckers for some time in the ‘hood.

At the end of October (a warm month dry month in the end, which turned very wet (though still warm) at its close) the female hawk killed a town pigeon in next door’s garden (our neighbours feed the town pigeons every day, which gather on their roof invariably – good for hawk watching!) and Malu killed an older hen blackbird – almost his swansong in actual fact – but not quite…

When October turned into November I had decided to lure our local jays into the garden with their old favourites - monkey nuts – and within a day, both jays and magpies (unfortunately) were taking the bait (and burying them all over the gardens).

Collared doves started to appear in the garden about this time (ghastly things) and in the first week of November I recorded our first delightful wee coal tit – which I was soon to discover was a pair (of tits) – really good news (probably my favourite of the “true tits”).

Chaffinches and blue tits came to my attention as “wildlife highlights” in early November (though they’d been present since we moved in to be fair) and on Saturday 12^th November, our beloved Malu monster (our longish-haired famous tom cat (I’d become quite well known in photography circles since my photo of cat and blackbird in which Malu’s eyes stole the show)) gave his last present to all of birdkind.

It was on this day that a local female hawk took one of the group of starlings from our and next doors’ feeders and held it under its talons outside our conservatory. Malu immediately (rather foolishly I suppose) ran towards the hawk, which flew off – as did its relieved prey, the starling, which the sparrowhawk left behind.

Our dear Malu’s last act of note therefore was to save a starling from being plucked alive by one of the local hawks…

The next day, on Sunday 13^th November, Malu died in seconds (suffocated) after getting a kibble stuck at the bottom of his windpipe (right at the junction of the trachea) - a terrible blow for both Anna and myself after two years of bad personal news for us both, during which “Malu monster” was a real source of comfort, especially to Anna.

Our first visiting fieldfare were seen on the 15^th November – these migrating flocks became quite a common sight over the garden during the winter – large rattling thrushes with white underarms. Very often they used the large ash at the end of the garden to perch, group and take stock.

By the third week of November, both Anna and I had noticed our first goldfinch on the sunflower hearts feeder – a singular bird at first, but this wouldn’t last long.

As the weather grew colder and wetter at the start of December, small groups of goldfinches squabbled over our feeder, the local rooftop jackdaws became a little bolder and started to take fat from our hanging coconuts and there was evidence of another female hawk kill (this time a collared dove) under our apple tree.

Our first wren became apparent in the first week of December – skulking around under the feeders and by the end of the second week of December, our first long-tailed tits and first goldcrest (all flitting about near the feeders and also in the large conifer) were nice garden highlights to record.

December was a pretty wet month (very wet at times) and on the 11^th of December we picked up our two new kittens (“Arrack” and “Elgin”) to replace poor “Malu” and give “Yala” some company.

A combination of having a very level-headed older cat and a lot of effort from myself and Anna – breaking the new cats in over a good month meant we avoided a lot of the cat introduction issues – in fact because of our slowly slowly take on the introductions, we had no issues at all to be fair – Yala was very interested in her new house mates, and chose to sleep with them when all barriers were eventually removed.

Come the middle of a wet, warm December and we were treated to the sight of our first PAIR of green woodpeckers (both male and female) anting in the garden on separate days. I had seen evidence of this behaviour in the lawn in the autumn (and had heard green woodpeckers around the ‘hood) but this was proof positive that we had anting green woodpeckers in the garden – lovely to see and something we never had at “Swift Half”.

By the start of January, whilst the weather was still warm, clearly the days were short and large winter flocks of long-tailed tits became obvious in the garden and I saw my first grey heron fly over the garden around this time also.

By the third weekend of January I had seen our first winter thrushes (both redwing AND fieldfare alight in our garden itself – all in the prunus tree at the very back of the garden – our apple tree at the front of the garden had produced an awful lot of red apples in its good year so I assume they were after those hundreds of fruit).  Both species we didn’t have at “Swift Half” so this was a nice surprise.

Our first (male) blackcap appeared in the honeysuckle in the first week of February and the local collared doves began to mate pretty-well incessantly at this time also (like pigeons and doves tend to do, almost all year round).

The redwing never seemed to feed on our dropped apples though – but by the middle of February we had at least one fieldfare (that I saw anyway) eating apples from our lawn.

This coincided EXACTLY with our first snows of any significance – which covered everything with a couple of inches of snow which sat around for a while due to day time subzero temperatures.

The middle of February also brought us another surprise visitor, a large rook (definitely a rook, not a carrion crow) that tended to hang around our garden and our eastern neighbours’ gardens – I still have no idea why this bird, primarily a flocking crow of open countryside, hung about on its own in a relatively suburban area?!

A herring gull (first for the garden and not at “Swift half” either) alighted on our television aerial in mid February and within a few minutes of our eastern neighbours (that’s our neighbours to the east and not Mr.and Mrs.Chang from Singapore you understand!) putting up their north-facing blue tit box on the wall of their house (attached to ours), two blue tits were investigating! (I found out much later in the year that our cats killed all the young blue tits from this nestbox on the day they fledged – I’m not sure whether they got them all, but certainly they had more than one… ).

Right at the end of February I saw two fieldfares chase each other around our garden (one definitely had the “dibs” on our apples) and Yala caught a great tit in our neighbour’s garden which she gave to the kittens as a plaything. She certainly seemed to be acting as their “mother” (of sorts).

As February turned into March and the weather grew very warm (for the time of year) magpies started to build their domed nests in tall bare trees visible from the garden and the redwings started to migrate back to Scandinavia on the last night of February - the 29^th as it was a leap year - the “tseeping” of night-migrating thrushes could be heard throughout March until the third April when I assume they had pretty-well all gone by then.

BY the middle of March, a pair of woodpigeons had begun to nest in the large conifer in the garden (though they eventually were to be put off by “Arrack” climbing that tree and disturbing their efforts!

Starlings were also beginning to nest in the front soffits though I put them off by blocking their entrance hole with tightly squashed chicken wire - we were looking to replace the rotten gutters, soffits and fascias after all, so this was a necessary tactic to try and get the starlings to expend energy nesting elsewhere rather than waste a lot of energy nesting in a site already ear-marked for destruction.

By the middle of March (the 15^th to be exact) I had a day when I hadn’t seen or heard fieldfares in or above the garden for the first time in exactly four months – they had departed maybe a couple of weeks earlier than the latter redwings.

The middle of March saw a pair of blackbirds begin to attempt to nest in our photinia bush (doomed I’m afraid with three cats around) and next door’s blue tits start to nest properly in their wee nest box.

Unfortunately (I suppose) the cock blackbird was to meet its maker at the feet of our large female hawk before the nest properly got underway and I didn’t see any blackbirds attempt to nest in the garden again.

The hot, sunny March meant good thermals and it became the best month of the year (by far!) to watch buzzards (often in pairs or trios) soaring in the blue skies above our garden.

On April 6^th (in the first month of miserable weather) a pair of robins began to nest in my old green nest box which I’d nailed to the old damson tree in the garden and ensured it was covered in some of the thick ivy which climbed up the trunk of the tree.

Over a period of five days the hen laid five eggs (one per day) and by my birthday, she was sitting on five eggs – which hatched two weeks later and we had a family of growing robins in our tree – very nice!

Our joy lasted only four days though as at the grand old age of 4 days, (ten days before they were due to fledge) whilst Anna and I were at work, an unseen predator (almost certainly avian in nature due to the lack of obvious disturbance of the nest) took all five hatchlings – I suspect a corvid (jay or magpie) or possibly a woodpecker or a hawk. At a push I suppose one of our (bastard) grey squirrels could have been the culprit – I guess I’ll never know.

On the 27^th April I saw my first house martins of the year above the house, heading west and also my first of my favourite birds of all, high above the house at dusk – my beautiful, dark, screaming devil birds - the SWIFTS!

I had carefully built my favourite birds a home in our attic (with entrance hole drilled through the attic wall) to try and attract these fantastic birds to nest with us, as they had at “Swift Half” for three years before we moved.

Unfortunately I (nor the swifts) had any idea that 2012 would be bordering on catastrophic for them in terms of breeding success.

As they arrived at the end of April, there was nothing but incessant rain in the air.

I saw my first swifts on the 27^th April as I’ve written above, but it was almost two whole weeks later when I saw the next lot. IT wasn’t until 12^th May when the rains stopped for a day or two that a good number of swifts began arriving - joined by two swallows (quite rare to see these from the garden this year).

By the middle of May in the last few years, our swifts were already breeding – but in 2012 they’d hardly arrived and when they did, all they found were cool temperatures, driving rain, high winds and hardly any food at all.

Basically, the whole of April, three weeks of May, the whole of June and half of July were cold and wet with high winds.

Of course, the weather did occasionally, briefly pick up from time to time, briefly, and I watched parties of swifts regularly hunt around our road and investigate my “swift attractor CD call” and gutters when the early morning weather did allow from 28^th May, all spring and early summer until the end of June (although twice in late July they “said goodbye”).

That said, it was no surprise at all to hear about large numbers of swifts migrating back to Africa at the end of May, after failed breeding attempts.

2012 will certainly be the most terrible year I can remember for swifts (worse than even 2007 for example) which this superb bird will really struggle to recover from (if it isnt struggling enough already!).

I can only desperately hope for better conditions next year and enough warmth and light for a couple of swifts that investigated our gaff this year – to actually nest here next year!

In the second week of May I was lucky enough to see the first of the hobbies arrive – both flying north at speed.

In the second and third weeks of May the local young starlings had erupted en masse from their nests (have you noticed how they all appear at once?!) and our kittens killed at least one poor-flyer – their first avian kills at about 7 months old.

Bird highlights for the rest of the “summer” were restricted to my swift sightings (or no sightings) and it became clear that for the last ten days of July, my favourite birds were all heading home (if they hadn’t gone already).

It was desperately unfortunate that just as summer effectively started (middle of July for a few weeks) most swifts were leaving, having failed to breed at all.

Large(ish) numbers of screaming swifts could be heard and seen high above the house at dusk in the last two weeks of July – all heading south and as I write, I finally saw my (probable) last two swifts of the year, both together, at height, flying south over the house at around 1700hrs BST on August 23^rd, in darkening, cloudy skies pre-empting the rain forecast for Reading festival and August Bank Holiday weekend.

As I said, if I hope for one thing in our second year at our house, I hope for a better year for swifts and a couple of nesters would make me a very happy boy!

The final (new or at least first) bird species I saw (or more properly – heard) in our garden was a pair of bullfinches at the end of our first 12 months at our new gaff. I was typing away at the computer like I am now – and the unmistakeable (to me anyway) “pyoo… pyoo” of a pair of bullfinches wafted its way through the open window to me. I saw them not (they didn’t stay long) but I think they were calling from our biggest conifer – anyway… a new species for the garden and another species that I never recorded at “Swift Half”.

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Mammals

We had foxes regularly in the garden at “Swift Half”, but as we keep hens, that was one garden mammal I might have appreciated leaving behind at our old place.

Of course, foxes being foxes that was probably never going to be the case and lo, so it transpired.

We had already introduced ourselves to our new (human) neighbours by the time we moved in properly at the start of September 2011 – and informed them that we kept (quiet, clean!) hens. To a man (and woman) they all said: “Well you’ll have to be careful of the local foxes”, so we knew what was in store I guess.

Within a fortnight of us moving in, I found a ripe red fox turd (black cherry) on the front lawn and heard two young foxes bickering playfully in the school grounds opposite the house.

At the start of our second month at the house, I had seen a fox race through our back garden after dark as I supped a tea on the back lawn.

All through October 2011 I set the trail camera in the garden with a little bait occasionally (a suspended frankfurter) and got a few clips of at least one fox entering and exiting the garden.

Rather like the foxes at “Swift Half” though, our new foxes did not seem bothered about the hens.

Strange, but I guess that urban foxes (or semi-urban foxes in our case) are pretty well fed – they don’t have to resort to tunnelling under chicken runs for a meal. Well… I hope that’s the case anyway!

The local vixens began their winter mating screams on 6^th January 2012 and I’m pretty sure all the local foxes have bred successfully this season.

More interested in the hens seemed to be the omnipresent woodmice.

We have a feed bin in which we store some hen basics including purple gentian spray, worming powder, some bedding and of course sacks of layer pellets (staple food) and treats (mealworm bird seed  - more commonly given to wild birds).

Woodmice found this stash within a month of us moving in and whilst the only woodmice I saw for months at the house were unfortunate individuals brought in by the cats (and then eaten by the hens very often), I did catch a lucky glimpse of one bold mouse in daylight hours at the end of July 2012.

This particular mouse was stealing spilled feed from the roof of the coop, (over three feet from the ground), inside the large chicken run my old neighbour and I built to house the much smaller coop.

As soon as I turned up, the wee mouse legged it – but I bet its there most nights - for in the new chicken run no cat can get…. Clever little mouse!

We had no grey squirrels for the three years that we lived at “Swift Half” (although I hear they are there now that we’ve left) but we have had no such similar luck at our new place.

I am told that grey squirrels used to build winter dreys in the old wooden soffits at our house – and after replacing the rotting wooden soffits with shiny new plastic jobbies, the nesting material that fell out of the old ones suggested that indeed was the case.

I know we’ve had at least six different individual squirrels in the garden since we moved in – one even was cheeky enough to start building a summer drey in our biggest, thickest, most ivy-clad damson tree, but we do have squirrel proof feeders, our cats love chasing them and touch wood, we’ve not seen a squirrel actually in the garden for a couple of months now.

 I have absolutely no idea how that’s happened (I guess the cats help as does the fact that I (unlike our neighbours) haven’t fed the garden birds since last winter) but its good news!

I still hear the occasional grey squirrel making its angry hissing noise from nearby big trees – but I think and hope we are squirrel free now – at least for a few months!

The only other type of mammal (I think!) we’ve recorded in the garden in our first twelve months at the house has been bats – I’m really please by that.

I knew that the primary school opposite the house had a bat survey carried out in the spring of 2011 (a mandatory procedure for the school when it announced that it wanted to carry out some building work on site) and on reading the report (before we moved in) I had gleaned the knowledge that common pipistrelles and soprano pipistrelles were present in the area.

On our second night after moving in, Anna and I saw two pipistrelles hunting very low over the back garden – in deliberate hawking circles. It was as if they knew our garden was a good hunting ground (that will be the midges and moffs at that point, over quite damp, untended gardens!)

I didn’t record these bats as highlights for long though and after a month of seeing them in the garden, they disappeared from my “wildlife radar” until a hot, sunny March (13^th) woke them from their winter slumbers – and they appeared again in the garden.

As I’ve written before in this lonnnng report, the weather this spring and some of the summer has been pretty poor – and bats were pretty rare sights in the garden at dusk until the weather improved considerably at the end of July.

It was at this time (the last day of July to be exact) that I also saw something I hadn’t seen since I was 16 years old in the highlands of Scotland - a (large) noctule bat flying very characteristically high and straight over the garden – a wonderful sight and something we certainly didn’t see at “Swift Half” (though to be fair, we did have the view of a white bat from our old place – much rarer than noctules!

During the twelfth month (August 2012) I regularly watched at least one, often two pipistrelles hunting very low over the garden (a foot or two above the grass often!) and decided to try to grab a photo or two, to see if I could tell whether they were soprano pipistrelles, common pipistrelles or something else.

Both bats seemed to be roosting to the north of the garden (not in our roof or outbuildings – but I’d already checked that before fitting new gutters, soffits and fascias).

I’ve always wondered where bats roost and I guess (a huge guess mind) that these two pips roost in the old, thick trees which line the old recreation ground a few hundred yards from our house, due north (where I also hear the owls and green woodpeckers).

That might make sense, but to be fair, they could be roosting in the old garages which border our garden to the north – there’s certainly access for them under the corrugated iron roofs and the garages are hardly used at all. That might be a better guess?

It was great fun to watch the bats around dusk during August 2012.

I noted with interest that on catching a large prey item such as a moff, the bats would slow down markedly after getting the prey in their gobs – almost to the point of hovering whilst they masticated the unfortunate insect.

I did get a few photographs during August and because of their quite dark faces I think (though I’m not sure as their fur is quite light in colour) that these are common pipistrelles.

Without a bat detector (too expensive) I will just have to get better photographs of our bats’ tragi and faces to ascertain for sure that they are 45kHz common pips rather than 55kHz sopranos…

I guess there are shrews and the odd vole in the garden (something to loom forward to seeing over the coming years) and I’ve dug hedgehog holes under the fences (especially at the rear of the garden where our nearest neighbours have pretty wild gardens) – I’d love to have a hog or two bumbling around the garden, that’s for sure. I can hope….!

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Plants and fungi

This may well be the strangest section in this year report as a lot of what I write about here will be reports of our garden plants (not particularly wild), buy hey ho – this is for my records in the main so might provide me interest by comparison over the years ahead.

Many of my “wildlife highlights” which I recorded on a giant spreadsheet throughout the twelve months came from the animal kingdom in the main  - kingdom plantae and of course the strange fungi (midway between animals and plants) even less so. I did record a few of these highlights though – and will endeavour to run through a choice few for my records below.

I’ve described the plants, shrubs, flowers and trees we found at our new house at the start of this ridiculously long year report and I’ll reiterate again, that we have cut right back most of these plants and shrubs.

We’ve taken quite a few out of the ground to be exact, but we’ve left the more mature trees, the yellow bee flowers and planted a couple of oak trees, a dozen sunflowers, a few herbs, a wildflower patch, a buddleja and many, many cornflowers.

Much MUCH more planting to follow in our second spring at the house I think!

First up and it’s fungi I want to mention.

The old lady who lived in a shoe, sorry, who we bought the house from, had cut down an old eucalyptus tree in the eastern border several years previously (and a willow in the back flower bed as it happens).

In both cases the work to remove the tree had not gone on underground – so in both cases we have been left with a rotten root system (and partial trunk) under the soil.

Not ideal you’d think and maybe not at all – if you’re not into looking at stag beetles and fungi!

Within three week of Anna and I moving in, hundreds and hundreds of clustered bonnets appeared overnight (quite lidddderally) on the rotten eucalyptus trunk and roots.

These clustered bonnets (“gurt” big groups of them) also appeared in the old compost heap (which we’ve now moved to turn into the herpe-home) and around the foot of the large, mature poplar tree at the rear of the garden.

Strange things these bonnets, they seem to virtually appear overnight, spore, die back, only to return en masse about ten days later.

This cycle lasted from the middle of September to the middle of November in 2011 – it will be interesting to see if the same thing happens this year (2012).

At the start of October 2011 a small group of glistening ink caps appeared under the dead tree in the front garden – these were to appear sporadically throughout the autumn also – but if you like fungi (as Anna and I do!) its always nice to have your own fungi in the garden – to let you know when to disappear on further-flung fungi forays in local damp woods!

The leaves on the trees (especially the poplar and apple) lasted much longer than I’d originally hoped for – into November if memory serves me right and the bumper crop of small red apples hung about on the apple tree for much of the autumn and indeed winter in a few dozen cases!

December was quite warm and because our front garden faces south (as does our back garden, even though it points north as described earlier), we even had a few daisies push through the warm lawn and flower in late December!

On 21^st February 2012, as the wintry weathery was pushed away to reveal a hot sunny March to come, our first crocus flowers in the back garden lawn (of many, white and purple, planted by the previous owner obviously) appeared, to the delight of the queen bumblebees which found them within a day or two.

At the start of March (on the 2^nd to be exact) the first of many daffodils pushed their way through the lawn also, in large clumps.

(Rather like the crocuses, its clear that the previous owner of the property liked her daffs and crocuses – I’ve never been keen on daffs personally – rubbery things and a horrible pale yellow colour to boot).

I may not be too keen on daffodils, but at least they act as harbingers of warmer, longer days when we’ve all had enough of bare trees and leaden skies!

Many of our daffodils came up “blind” this year (i.e. no flower heads) – I hear that was an issue nationwide in 2012, but I know not why.

On the 10^th of March 2012 (well into the hot, sunny month), I noticed our first garden celandines and also the first showing of our hybrid poplar’s male catkins.

A day later and one of the repulsive “old woman’s flowers” (a purple garden primrose) flowered in the eastern border of the back garden. I hope I’ve dug that up now (or the fencers did). I am no fan of what I call “old woman’s gardens” – you know… full of huge, brightly-coloured roses, lupins, pansies and the like – give me as many anemophilous flowers as entomophilous for sure but leave out the bedding plants – that’s the stuff of Chelsea, not for me.

This purple monstrosity was joined by a few god-awful domesticated hyacinths by the middle of March – another thing to get rid of before spring 2013 if I have my way!

By the 18^th of hot, sunny March, common dog violets started to appear in numbers in the front lawn (now THAT’S more like it!) and by the 23^rd of the month, the first poplar leaves were unfurling on our largest tree – earlier than I expected and a brilliantly uplifting sight for me.

The first blossom of our largest cherry tree started to appear on the 23^rd of March also (in what was to be a terrible year for blossom all over the country – we basically had none (or very very little) apple blossom for example) and next door’s sticky horse chestnut buds were appearing and a magnet to the eagle-eyed parakeets…

On the 27^th of March our damson trees first managed to push through a few bit of weak blossom (we thought they were dead before that happened!) and on the 29^th, some more old woman’s flowers (in this case a pink mini tulip) pushed their way through the increasingly warm, hard soil.

Even our gnarled old apple tree (which I thought traditionally flowered and “leaved” late) showed the first signs of leafing on the final day of March – a few days before the wet weather set in for a few months.

This might explain why the apple tree produced very little blossom and therefore about a fiftieth of the fruit it produced in 2011.

I’m told by my far more knowledgeable wife (in matters plant anyway!) that apple trees often have “years on” and “years off”. If that is the case (and my wife would know best for sure) then 2011 was an “apple on year” for sure (for our tree at least), whilst 2012 was an “off year”.

By the 4^th April 2012, Anna and I had started to use our conservatory as “Plant nursery” (of sorts) and our many cornflowers and sunflowers had started to push their way through their potting compost.

Dandelions and cat's ear (Anna’s pet hate unfortunately) were much in evidence in the front garden in April, which the mining and sweat bees loved and by the 20^th April, the blue ceanothus started to flower at the front of the outbuildings.

On St.George’s day 2012 (23^rd April), bang on time, a handful of large “St.George’s day mushrooms” appeared almost overnight around the old compost heap. They may well not return in 2013 as I’ve moved the heap.

A day later (24^th April) the first (and pretty-well last) apple blossom appeared through the incessant rain.

By the middle of May (12^th) our prunus tree had started to push through its first (green at this stage) cherries – there were to be quite a few fruit in the weeks ahead which the pigeons seemed to relish – and on that same day (12^th May) I took the brief opportunity (a dry day!) to mow the lawns for the first time in 2012!

Wild (I think) forget-me-nots flowered in the rear flower bed at the end of May, which mint moths seemed to enjoy (no mint in the garden at that time!) and by the end of May, the blue ceanothus had lost its flowers (and its tree bumblebees therefore) after a few short weeks (about three) of rampant activity on the very blue bush.

A month later (and after two more months worth of rain) and the heavily-scented mock orange (Philadelphus) in the back garden had blossomed magnificently. I’ve since had to cut that plant right back (for the fencing to happen) but I’m happy to say it lives on!

By 23^rd June our flowers which we’d (Anna had to be honest) nurtured from seed in the conservatory since March and planted outside a month or so later had begun to flower with poppies and the first two cornflower heads appearing first.

Right at the end of wet, wet June (I’d not mown the grass in a fortnight or so) and we saw our first (wild) bird’s foot trefoil flowers in the front lawn and our first white clover flowers in the meadow part of the back lawn (I’d decided by then to leave half the back lawn as more of a “meadow” than a closely-cropped more formal garden lawn, which produced nice results throughout the flowering season.

Many, many buttercups appeared in this “meadow” part of the lawn also.

Come the 1^st of July and this meadow was now full of white clover and purple “self heal” flowers – which the insects loved of course.

July moved slowly (and wetly) on and by the 5^th our yellow garden loosestrife (horrible invasive old woman’s stuff of no interest to pollinating insects) had pretty well lost all its flowers after ten days of rampant flowering and getting hammered by rain!

I’ll certainly endeavour to replace these flowers with red valerian or something far more insect-friendly (though less spectacular I’m sure) for next year.

The third week of July saw summer arrive finally and as it did, our first sunflower burst out of its 8 foot high stem – we were to have about a dozen big sunflower heads throughout July and August – but none of them lasted more than a fortnight and soon drooped.

We’ll collect all the seeds of course, but I can say that our sunflower year has been very successful at our new house – unlike our old neighbours a few miles away to the west whose sunflowers were plagued by slugs and hardly flowered at all…

August came and our inherited “golden rod” blooms were at their best and covered in honeybees and drone flies. I know I shouldn’t keep golden rod (thanks to my good wildlife pal Jane for getting this flower identified for me by the way), but the bees adore it so much that I think I will.

Anna noticed that our wildflower meadow mix had now produced my preferred clover (wild pink clover) and that was targeted by our carder bees I’m glad to say, as the cornflowers, poppies and sunflowers all started to droop away pretty quickly.

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Wildlife we’ve gained since moving or that we’ve (temporarily?) lost

NB. This section contains only animals and fungi (things we can’t plant in the garden) There may be species I’ve missed, but not many I think.

Gained:

• hornets
• beautiful carpet moth
• hawthorn shieldbugs,
• red ants,
• dotted border moths
• “urban” jumping spiders
• meadow brown butterflies
• cream spot ladybirds
• striped drone flies
• splayed deer flies
• Mediterranean tube spider
• oak bush cricket
• green woodpeckers
• herring gull
• jackdaws
• fieldfares
• clustered bonnet fungi
• glistening ink cap fungi
• St.George’s day mushrooms.
• Common pipistrelles
• Nesting robins
• Rose-ringed parakeets
• Grey shoulder knot moths
• Developing stag beetles (as opposed to beetles that just dropped in once)
• Nesting starlings
• Tawny mining bees
• robber fly
• bullfinch pair (heard)
• One noctule bat above garden!

(Temporarily?) lost:

• nesting swifts (though they will soon I’m sure)
• Palmate newts
• hawfinch (though that was a one-off at “Swift Half” certainly).
• hedgehogs (though I only saw them twice at “Swift Half”)
• muntjac (though that was a one off at “Swift Half” also).
• Pied wagtail
• A few moth spp. including elephant hawkmoths and buff ermine moths (though I’ve hardly set my trap up yet at our new place).
• Nesting blue tits at our house (though these are clearly visible from our house, but nesting next door)
• Nesting house sparrows
• Most pond wildlife (including broad-bodied chaser and black tailed skimmer dragonflies) (that will change after I put the pond in!)
• Some butterfly spp (inc brown argus, painted lady and small copper (but this year was terrible for butterflies and I suspect none of the above were at “Swift Half” this year either).
• blue mason bees (my favourite bee… but some drilling for them in the winter will get them here I’m sure)
• Red Mason bees
• chiffchaff (though I only saw that twice at “Swift Half”)
• Rats (and I hope it stays that way!).

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Hopes for the next year

Now that we’ve destroyed all that we intend to destroy (pretty well) in the way of plants and foliage in the garden, we can start to build up a much more wildlife-friendly (but also user friendly) garden and stop peering at lupins, roses and pansies etc…

I’ll get the pond dug in before the autumn I hope, and landscape around as it I go – eventually ensuring that we have plenty of plants in and around the pond such as purple loosestrife, yellow flag iris, marsh marigolds, bulrushes and lilies.

The “herpe” and “amphi” homes I constructed in August 2012 are situated beneath the lilac and a large damson tree, at the edge of the long grass “meadow” in which the pond is located, so I’m hoping for great things from that.

With any luck lots of frogs and newts from the two nearby ponds, and maybe a grass snake or slow worm from next door’s old compost heap (I’ve provided snake tunnels to connect our compost heap and our neighbours).

With a new pond should come far more insect life and therefore our bats might increase in number as might our visiting birds, looking for a bath, a drink and maybe an insect snack or two.

As for boxes - well…. I’ll hope that next year, our swifts have a better year (weather-wise) than this year and take up residence in my attic swift box (HD camera already in place).

I’ll also put up an external box in the early spring – I am desperate (more than anything else) to have nesting swifts back with us, but am realistic enough to suggest that it maybe a year or five, even with favourable weather and a repeated decoy call to attract them in like this year, before we have my favourite birds of all nesting with us again…

The three passerine nest boxes in the garden will have to be better hidden and probably surrounded by chicken wire to prevent raptor / corvid / squirrel / cat attack. I may actually take them down next year and concentrate again on the pond, plants for insects and swift/bat boxes.

As for insects – well… now that Anna and I are learning more and more each day about flowers for insects, we’ll set to work asap in the new year providing lots of bee friendly plants and we’ll start by preparing the horrible soil with masses of local rotted horse manure and a mini digger.

I think we’re looking to grow a thick pyracantha or ceanothus hedge along the back wall and cover the western fence (at least) with clematis and / or hardier jasmine.

We’ll turn our “meadow” into a proper meadow full of wild flowers, grow plenty of flowering herbs along the eastern border and combine with buddeja and lavender.

We’ll ensure that our mock orange does well again – surrounded by red valerian if I get my way  - which would go someway to grabbing any wandering hummingbird hawkmoths and pull them into the garden.

Nothing for looks – all for the books (insects).

Dragonflies should increase markedly next year also, with a fresh pond in the garden, although it might be a year or three before we have adult damsels and dragons coming out of our pond after breeding.

I’m hoping to set up the moff trap much more next year (I’ve only used it a handful of times this year) to see what moffs we have in the garden.

What with the large poplar (and a few poplar saplings) I’m really hoping for a few poplar hawkmoths next year.

Maybe if I get a few ornamental tobacco plants in the ground and we finally get a Spanish plume summer (you know…. like the ones we used to have?!) then maybe I can even dream of a convolvulus hawk moff – or maybe that’s going a bit far?!

I’m proposing to start a permanent log pile in the western flowerbed also – to be constructed over a rotten eucalyptus stump which is already underground in situ and already holds big stag beetles.

This log pile might also go some way to keeping any jasmine or clematis root system shaded and moist also – something they both thrive on.

I’ll add to the mason bee holes in the back wall and provide more holes (smaller – for my favourite wee bees - the blue masons) in a fence post or two and see what happens.

I’m certainly expecting more butterflies (earlier too) – but to be fair there couldn’t hardly have been less this year.

What about mammals?

I’ll certainly put a bat box up under the eaves this autumn (if I’m not too late already) and hope to increase our bat count significantly, but as for other mammals – I can’t say I’m that bothered at present.

The family of foxes living under the school buildings across the road can stay on that side of the road as far as I am (and our hens are) concerned!

Badgers cannot get into our garden (what with the wall and the fact that no badgers live within a mile of our gaff – and even those badgers would have to cross about half a dozen busy roads in the opposite direction to nice fields and countryside – not going to happen.

That said, I have dug wee hedgehog holes under our new fence and would love a hog or two crashing around the garden after dark next year.

Maybe my proposed log pile (mainly for the stag beetles already here) might attract hogs into our garden – it all depends on our neighbours really – for unlike birds and bees, poor old hogs need gaps in fences to get from garden to garden…

Big hopes then and a lot of work to do to try and ensure this happens. Then all I need is a dollop of luck!

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Summary.

We’ve had a good start to our new garden nature reserve with quite difficult ground to work with (heavy, flinty anaerobic clay) and overgrown, throttled, unmanaged borders. Considering my poor health for five months (as I write) and Anna’s temporary inability to help (for other reasons which I’ll write about soon enough) we’ve carried out a lot of work in 12 months and seen a lot of “tings”.

If I get just a half decent pond in now and nesting swifts then I’ll be a happy boy – but I’m actually hoping for a lot more than that with a lot more work….

Roll on year two!

TBR.