librarian2003 (librarian2003) wrote in weagardening, @ 2011-11-15 01:10:00 |
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Current mood: | grumpy |
Week 8
Hopefully, by next week, it will be possible to confirm to everyone where we will be next term, and what the term dates will be.
For this week's Plants of the Week, we had Hippeastrums from Maureen and Hamamelis from Jean on Tuesday. On Friday, we had hollies, or Ilex, from Shirley, and Nerine from Margaret.
Images are here:
Hamamelis and Hippeastrum, Ilex and Nerine
Our sites of the week are here:
GARDENING FOR PLEASURE
Sites of the Week : Week 8
1 For an article on Hamamelis, ranking their fragrance, and for many other articles
The Scott Arboretum, Pennsylvania
http://blogs.scottarboretum.org/gardens
2 For images of all sorts of bulbs. The Bulb Society now has a new gallery, also shown below.
The Bulb Society
http://www.bulbsociety.org/GALLERY_OF_T
http://www.bulbsociety.org/newgallery.p
3 For all sorts of articles
Nigel Colborn’s Gardening Blog
http://silvertreedaze.blogspot.com/
4 For a blog on garden history
Garden History Girl
http://gardenhistorygirl.blogspot.com/
5 For images of all the hollies you could ever imagine. Click on ‘Photos’ for all the thumbnails, or, in the listings, click on the holly leaf for a photo of each variety.
The Ilex Garden
http://ilexgarden.com/collection.ht
6 For a cornucopia of gardening articles, and the luxury of an index
Paghat’s Garden
http://www.paghat.com/gardenhome.ht
Jo Hanslip
November 2011
Our main topic was Wildlife in the garden. We had a good discussion about the wildlife that we'd seen in our gardens, and here is the handout, on how to care for wildlife:
GARDENING FOR PLEASURE
Looking After Wildlife
A good wildlife garden is more than just a corner of a garden left to go wild.
Natural aspects, including soil type, drainage and climatic conditions play a big part in what can grow in your garden. The way your garden has been managed in the past will also influence what lives there. If it has been intensively managed, or has less green space and more concrete, it is likely to support less wildlife.
Key habitats
Provide as many habitats as possible, but avoid cramming too much in and focus on what can be done well in the space you have.
The key garden habitats are a lawn, trees and shrubs, flowers and water. Look to create smaller microhabitats within these. Here are a few examples:
• Blackbirds and starlings search for leather jackets (cranefly grubs) in short grass. Long grass provides habitat for egg laying and over wintering of caterpillars and leather jackets.
• Different species of tree and shrub and flowering plants provide nectar and other food sources throughout the year.
• Rotational cutting of shrubs creates different structures and ages of growth, benefiting different wildlife at different times.
• A water feature with different depths is great for wildlife. Shallow areas are used by bathing and drinking birds, emerging dragonflies and somewhere for amphibians to lay eggs. Deeper areas help aquatic insects survive cold spells and are good places to watch newts swimming.
Somewhere to breed and shelter
Wildlife requires two fundamental things: somewhere safe to breed and shelter and somewhere to forage and feed throughout the year.
Creating a variety of habitats and microhabitats provides different opportunities for wildlife to breed and shelter.
• Grow climbers against walls and fences to provide shelter and roosting and breeding sites for birds, such as house sparrows. This takes up little ground space.
• A thick, well-developed, thorny shrub bed or hedge provides nest sites and shelter for birds.
• A bat box provides roosting sites for bats, a pile of leaves may be used by a hibernating hedgehog and a bird box provides somewhere for small birds to raise their broods.
• Leave tidying of borders and cutting shrubs until late winter or early spring to provide shelter for insects through winter.
• Honesty and hedge garlic provides somewhere for orange tip butterflies to breed.
• Tube-bundles, short lengths of drinking straws, hollow canes or plant stems, tied in bundles are excellent nesting sites for harmless solitary bees, lacewings and ladybirds.
• Dead wood is good for beetles and other specialist beneficial insects, fungi and mosses.
Somewhere to forage and feed
Creating a range of habitat niches provides different areas and opportunities for wildlife to feed at different times of year.
• Early and late flowering plants provide nectar for insects at critical times - just after emergence or prior to hibernation.
• Leave tidying borders and pruning shrubs until late winter and early spring to provide seeds and fruit for birds and small mammals throughout winter.
• Ivy is a late source of autumn nectar for insects and late winter fruit for birds.
• Fruiting bushes are a good source of food for birds and mammals during the autumn and part of the winter.
• Annual plants that produce many seeds late in the summer are a good source of food for birds through autumn into winter.
• Many baby birds need insects - a good source of protein - if they are to grow strong and healthy and have a good chance of surviving the winter. A variety of garden plants encourages these insects.
Wildlife in Winter
For the animals that inhabit our gardens, winter brings some of the greatest survival challenges of their lives and what we do as gardeners will have a big impact on their chances of seeing another summer.
Animals living in higher latitudes, like ours, have evolved different types of behaviour to deal with the colder months. There are three basic strategies:
• migrate to get away from the cold weather;
• stay put and remain active;
• stay put and hibernate.
We can find animals that fit into all of these groups in our own gardens. By understanding more about the way each type of animal deals with the winter weather, we can do our bit to make our gardens places where their chances of survival are maximised.
Migrants
Most conspicuous of the animals that adopt this strategy are those best equipped to carry it off: the birds. When we think of bird migration, those that normally spring to mind are swallows, house martins, fly catchers and warblers. These are birds that help make the summer garden a special place in Britain, but they escape our winter weather by flying to places like Africa or southern Europe. However, there are also birds that migrate into our gardens during the course of the winter, escaping from even harsher weather in places like Scandinavia and Iceland. Winter migrants like redwings, fieldfares, bramblings and waxwings turn an average winter's day into red-letter day when they show up in the garden.
Many winter migrants are attracted to our gardens to feed from berry-bearing shrubs. By including fruiting trees and shrubs like hawthorn, holly, firethorn and cotoneaster in your garden, you can maximise your chances of seeing these special visitors and do your bit to help them survive the winter. Shrubs like these will also provide welcome shelter and roosting places for hard-pressed winter visitors. Many birds, whether winter migrants or residents of the wider countryside, will move into gardens when the winter weather is at is very worst, freezing fields and their natural food and water sources. By providing a variety of natural and supplementary foodstuffs as well as unfrozen water during these periods, your garden really can make the difference between life and death.
Active residents
Many of our birds and most of our mammals adopt a strategy of remaining for the winter and staying active. Those that feed on seeds and/or fruit can normally find enough to eat during the winter, but much depends on the success, or otherwise, of the natural crops that comprise their food. Gardeners can do a lot of important work to help animals like these survive the winter by providing supplementary winter food like seeds, fat and a variety of other scraps. Some species are more likely to come into gardens in winters when their natural food is in shorter supply; for example more great tits spend the winter in gardens in years when the natural crop of beech mast has been poor.
If you provide a ground feeding station (like a bird table, but just a few inches off the ground), not only will you help those birds that are not keen to use other feeders (e.g. song thrushes and dunnocks), but you can also do a great service for your garden's small mammal population. Animals like field voles, bank voles and the wood-mouse will all visit ground feeders to supplement their natural vegetarian diets. They are most active at night but in winter, when they have to eat especially well to survive, you may also see them during the day. Small mammals will prefer feeding stations to be close to cover, but you may want to cover the whole structure with a metal wire frame if cats or rats are likely to be a nuisance in your garden.
Other mammals like shrews, and birds such as wrens, are largely carnivorous and must find live prey throughout the winter; but invertebrates at this time of year are hard to find. To add to their problems, these small predators must eat surprisingly large numbers of invertebrates because they lose so much body heat in the winter. We can help them by putting out live food like mealworms and waxworms.
Gardeners can grow climbers like ivy and dense evergreen shrubs like holly and yew which will all provide shelter and roosting places for small birds and mammals. Habitat piles made of logs and rocks, especially where overgrown with vegetation, will also provide them with safe havens. If you clean out bird nesting boxes in autumn to remove any old nesting material (which can harbour parasites and disease) and add a little clean dry straw, the boxes are likely to be used as roosting sites by birds in winter. Over 40 wrens have been counted emerging from a single nest box during the winter.
Hibernators
Have you ever wondered what happens in winter to all of the invertebrates that bring our summer gardens to life? Most insects have annual life cycles that enable the next generation to see out the winter as an early development stage (e.g. egg, lava or pupa). There are examples of butterflies that over-winter in each of the main life stages; egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis) and adult (butterfly). Most gardeners have, at one time or another, come across a hibernating tortoiseshell butterfly in an outhouse or garage. Occasionally they start their hibernation within the house itself only to be rudely awakened when the central heating kicks in during the autumn. If you find a butterfly that has been prematurely awakened like this, don't put it into the cold garden, but release it into a cool, but sheltered place such as a garage or shed.
Whatever their life stage, insects enter a period of arrested development called diapause in the winter which is akin to hibernation in mammals. They often produce a kind of natural anti-freeze that prevents the severe cold from damaging their tissues. So although we usually can't see many insects in the winter garden, they are all around: in the leaf litter, in the soil, behind bark, in hollow plant stems, under stones - in fact in just about any nook or cranny. You can help over-wintering invertebrates in the garden by supplying more of the nooks and crannies e.g. by providing habitat piles or even putting out some of the commercially available bug boxes. But perhaps the single most important thing you can do is to delay the traditional autumn tidy up until spring. The plant and the leaf litter provide myriad places for invertebrates to over-winter; if you leave the tidy up until spring when these animals have continued their development, you will give a huge boost to your garden's ecology. Remember, invertebrates not only make an important contribution to our enjoyment of the garden in their own right, but they are an absolutely crucial element of the garden food-webs which sustains birds, mammals, amphibians and all.
Of our mammals only the bats, dormouse and the hedgehog hibernate during the winter. When warm-blooded mammals hibernate, they undergo some dramatic physiological changes that enable them to survive long periods without expending much energy and therefore making fewer demands on their stored fat reserves. When a hedgehog hibernates, its pulse rate drops from around 190 beats per minute to about 20; it takes only one breath every minute or two; and its temperature drops from 35 to 10 degrees centigrade, although the core body temperature remains higher. Although they may rouse slightly during periods of warmer weather, our hibernating mammals will not normally wake up properly and move unless they are disturbed. A hedgehog will wake if its body temperature drops to a dangerous level indicating that its hibernating place is not up to scratch. At such times it will shiver to raise its body temperature and go and seek out a new place to hibernate. Needless to say, disturbances like these place severe demands on the animals already depleted fat reserves and lessen its chances of surviving the winter.
Amphibians like frogs, toads and newts also enter a kind of hibernation during the winter, but being cold blooded, the physiological changes they undergo are different from those of mammals. Amphibians tend to seek out a place in which to spend the winter that will be frost-free, since it is the frost that can damage body tissues. There they let their body temperatures drop with their surroundings so that they enter a state of extreme torpor. Male frogs often spend the winter in the mud at the very bottom of ponds whilst the females prefer to hibernate away from the pond, as do toads and newts. These animals seek out crevices underneath rocks and stones, in log piles and deep within leaf and plant litter as well as the soil itself. Gardeners can help hibernating animals by keeping disturbance of possible hibernating places to a minimum. Never turn or otherwise disturb a compost heap in winter since they are popular hibernating places for both amphibians and mammals. The same is true of habitat piles made from logs or stones. We can make or buy bat boxes that may be used in winter and hedgehog boxes that can be used both for breeding and hibernating. It is very easy to improvise good hibernating spots for hedgehogs, for example by leaning a sheet of plywood against a fence, wall or hedge in a quiet spot and covering it with leaves and branches: the space underneath the board can become a snug spot for an over-wintering hedgehog.
In winter we need to look at our gardens through different eyes and turn our thoughts as much to the things that we don't see as those that we do. By understanding more about how our garden animals are coping with one of the most testing periods in their lives, we will be in a better position to help them come through it.
Feeding Wildlife in the Garden
Bird tables: can provide a wonderful focal point for bird activity in your garden, and can hugely increase the total number of birds, and the number of species, that visit. But bird tables if badly situated or dirty can put birds at risk.
• Place your bird table somewhere where you can see it clearly, but where it is not regularly disturbed by passers-by
• Make sure birds have a good view from the table so that they can see approaching danger, but with a retreat such as a bush not too far away
• Don’t position near a fence or any structure from which a cat could pounce
• Move the position of the table occasionally if possible to reduce the risk of disease. Free-standing tables make this easier.
The basic considerations are:
• Aim for a table area of about 12in x 20in, so that the table is not too small (which will cause squabbles)
• Your bird table needs to withstand being out in all weathers
• Can your table be climbed easily by cats/foxes/rats? If your table is on a post, the straighter and smoother the post is, the more difficult it is for them to climb, although you can be innovative with bits of drainpipes or funnels half way up the post to thwart any climbing predator
• Thatched tables look great but may be stripped by birds for nesting materials
• Tables that combine food and water compartments risk food tainting the water
• The table surface needs to be cleanable. Wood should be treated with a water-based wood preservative, which should dry thoroughly before the table is used.
When to feed: It is now accepted practice to feed birds throughout the year – not just during the winter. Indeed, birds may be most in need of food in spring, just at the point where we are most likely to stop because we think it is getting warmer. By April and May, nights are often still freezing, but birds must begin to defend territories, spend much time singing or laying and incubating eggs, at the very time when there are no seeds and few insects available naturally. It is in late summer when your feeders will probably be most inactive.
You can be as inventive as you like with what you feed – but ALWAYS avoid salted food of any sort (chips, crisps, salted bacon, salted peanuts, plus desiccated coconut) as this can seriously dehydrate birds. And avoid feeding loose peanuts during the breeding season as this could possibly become lodged in the mouths of chicks.
• Keep your feeding stations hygienic - bird feeders bring lots of birds into contact with each other day after day.
• Clean feeders at least weekly with boiling water.
• Move the position of feeders regularly.
• Don’t allow food to go off in the garden.
• Buy food only from reputable dealers – if peanuts (unsalted) aren’t fit for human consumption, then they are not fit for birds.
• Provide water as well as food – it is essential for feather maintenance as well as drinking.
Different birds eat different foods, which is why putting out a variety of foodstuffs will attract a wider range of species. Typical foods include:
• Peanuts – good traditional food, best loved by the tit family but also taken by starlings, sparrows and greenfinches
• Sunflower seeds – especially loved by greenfinches
• Mealworms/ waxworms – not for the squeamish, live food is increasingly popular, good in the breeding season for robins, wrens, thrushes and many more
• Nyjer/Niger Seeds – especially loved by goldfinches
• Fat cake – tits, blackcap
• Table seed (mixed corn/wheat/pinhead oats) – collared dove
Deterring unwelcome visitors
There are several visitors that are often unwelcome at feeders. All come because there is food on offer – some to eat the food you put out, some to try to catch the birds you want to attract.
Rats – most problems occur either with spilt seed that isn’t cleared up regularly, or ground feeders left out overnight. Solutions include attaching seed trays to the base of hanging feeders to catch much of the dropped food, and bringing ground feeders in overnight.
Squirrels – grey squirrels are highly adaptable, and finding a solution that they cannot crack can be hard. Good products are now available – either Perspex domes that fit over or under a feeder, or metal cages that fit around the feeder and let small birds in but keep squirrels out, and also larger birds such as feral pigeons, crows, magpies, wood pigeons.
Cats – if it is your cat, or you can persuade your neighbour, attaching a bell to the cat’s collar is a good alarm for the birds; alternatively products are available which emit sounds designed to deter cats
Nestboxes
Bird nestboxes: Typical nestboxes – the ones with the small round hole - provide substitutes for the natural holes in old trees which are often absent from gardens. But there are many other types of boxes that can be used, each with a particular design to encourage a particular species. And it’s not only birds - bats, dormice, hedgehogs and even insects can be attracted to boxes too.
Most birds will require a nestbox that is higher than 6ft up to make them feel safe from predators, but shouldn’t be much higher than 15ft – much will depend on where you can reach, for the box will need to be accessible in order for it to be cleaned out. There are some birds, however, such as wrens and robins, that nest low down but well hidden in vegetation.
Where boxes are open to the elements, they should not face south or west, which will put the young birds at risk of overheating in sunshine and will also face the prevailing winds. Anywhere between north and east is ideal. Lean the box slightly forward too, to lower the risk of rain dribbling or driving in.
It is best to clear out your nestbox each year, and the best time to do it is autumn. Sometimes you will find unhatched eggs or even the remains of youngsters. This is quite normal – birds try to produce as many young as possible, knowing that there will always be some losses due to weather or food shortages. Disinfect only with boiling water.
Sources:
RSPB: http://www.rspb.org.uk/advice/garde
Wildlife Gardening: http://www.wildlife-gardening.org.u
Jo Hanslip
October 2007
Edited November 2011
Jo