As you may know from recent posts I’ve started moth trapping and have been part of the formation of the Ceredigion Moth Group. It’s all a little ‘geeky’ but I quite enjoy the moth trapping, as does Morgan and learning more about the creatures around us is always a good thing. Keeping records of them and submitting them to the various interested parties makes it all feel a little more worthwhile, and in a small way these activities may help with the conservation of rare species.
In some respects I would rather be actively contributing to conservation in this way than simply donating money to conservation charities. However, as well as actively taking part in moth counting and submitting results to the Big Garden Bird Watch we also spent some money recently on becoming members of the RSPB and Butterfly Conservation.
RSPB
There are a few RSPB reserves locally and we do often enjoy a short walk at the Ynyshir Reserve, so becoming a member seemed like a sensible thing to do. The membership fees obviously go towards supporting the RSPB which should be the main reason for joining, but you get quite a it for your money too. As well as free entry to their reserves you receive a Quarterly Bird magazine with plenty of interesting articles in it and junior members such as Morgan get a ‘Wild Times’ magazine six times a year, featuring the adventures of Owlbert, Rookie, Red the squirrel and Squeak the mouse. You also get free gifts if you want them and RSPB bird guide book (which I already had).
Obviously you don’t really join for these benefits, but we were pretty interested in what Morgan would get for his membership fee as it is these things that will keep him interested in the wildlife around him.
Butterfly Conservation
The Butterfly Conservation membership is similar. For your fees you receive free entry to their reserves a ‘Butterfly’ magazine three times a year, a welcome pack and a garden butterfiles ID guide, along with advice on attracting butterflies and moths to your garden
Of course, you also get a nice warm feeling at having helped the conservation effort of our wild British birds, butterflies and moths.
Both organisations have decent websites where you can join them or simply donate. They both have lots of information online, not just about the organisations themselves, but about the birds and butterflies of the UK too., so check out their websites and join up too.
As well as attracting lots of wildlife to your garden, a wildlife garden also gives you an excuse to be a bit lazy with the gardening from time to time! It isn’t just about bird boxes and ponds; just as important are areas of unkempt garden and piles of logs and sticks.
We don’t have huge garden here, but it is always nice to see wildlife in it so we do various things to attract wildlife. We have several bird feeders offering peanuts, seeds and fat balls. We have a few areas of unkempt garden with wild flowers and grasses growing in them. We have a little nest box on one of the trees at the bottom of the garden.
As far as maintenance goes, then we try to leave dead seed heads and such like for a while before cutting them back. In fact we try to leave most cutting back until spring. We keep the use of pesticides and other chemicals to a minimum. We also have piles of dead wood, compost bins and heaps of sticks all of which help attract wildlife.
It does work too. We have had 24 species of bird to the garden, frogs, toads and newts, numerous butterflies and moths, grass snakes, and as far as mammals go, hedgehog, rabbit, squirrel, mice, bats and even a ferret!
If you want to know how wildlife friendly your garden is and get more hints and tips then Natural England have set up a website called the Big Wildlife Garden. You can add you garden to it and list the features that you have. Our garden is on there and the latest few things we have done mean we have 53 points and a gold certificate! I think I need to build a bird bath next.
How does your garden fare?
I came across a weblog written by another local resident the other day. I can’t remember how it came to my attention, probably through a ‘Google Alert’ in my inbox, but it was well written with lots of local interest so I had a look through it and then to my surprise found a photo of myself on it.
I don’t get too many photos of me windsurfing so it was good to see it, and good to see that my windsurfing had obviously impressed someone, although I doubt that I was doing 40 mph! Check it out, the weblog entry is ‘Like a Bat out of Hell‘.
Its good to see someone else from Borth with a lively blog too. I would have said ‘it’s a small world’ after seeing myself mentioned on his blog, but I guess anyone who has ever been to Borth already knows that!
It has been a long standing joke in our family that until I was quite old I didn’t realise that Arboretums are where you go to look at trees, I always thought it was where you go to looks at ducks! There is some reasoning behind all of this in that the arboretum on the Isle of Man at St Johns is where me and a lot of others go to feed the ducks. This is what I have done since I was quite little. We never used to look at any of the trees and in fact I would say there are more ducks than trees anyway.
Alan did think it was just me being a bit stupid and was teasing me in front of a few other Manxies, most of which agreed with me and thought the arboretum was for ducks as well.
You can imagine how disappointed I was when we went to Westonbirt Arboretum only to find no ducks!
The next generation of duck loving Manxies are being brought up in the same way I notice. An old friend of mine from the Isle of Man is keeping up with tradition and teaching her son the true purpose of Arboretums as well
OK, OK, don’t get too excited you won’t be seeing us on the TV!
After our recent trip to the Isle of Man I was contacted by someone at the BBC on the island to write a little article about our experiences geocaching on the Isle of Man.
I did, and it is now live on the BBC Isle of Man website. You can see the article here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/content/articles/2008/05/23/geo_caching_feature.shtml
Whilst trawling the internet I came across a recent blog post by Elaine Nicholles about her holiday to Borth. Part of the post says:
The weather was bad mostly. The laptop died on the first day. I didn’t feel well for some of the time. I only had one shower. I was pretty smelly in the end. All part of the fun!
But overall I think they had fun. Check out the full post at ‘All at Sea with a bucket and spade‘.
