Visitors to Garden

One of the great things about having a garden, even if it is a small city garden, is enjoying the wildlife it can attract. In this post we will have a look at what has been visiting the garden during the time we have been creating it.

We have a wide range of insect visitors including bees and butterflies which we shall continue to try and encourage this year. We put a pair of bird feeders in the garden soon after we bought the house, but for the first year they did not really attract anything. As the garden developed, the potential habitat for birds improved, with the increase in visiting insects and places for birds to hide and look for food, birds did begin to visit the garden, especially during winter and nesting time in the spring.

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

     This Robin was one of the first visitors to our garden and at least one continues to visit daily

The Robin was one of the first visitors to the garden but others soon followed. The large tree in the house behind us has some disadvantages for the garden. It absorbs a lot of water in the summer from our garden, meaning we have to water relentlessly. The tree also also creates a lot of shade. However it also brings advantages such as attracting local birds. The next bird we noticed visiting was a female Chaffinch, which first started her visits during the nesting season, looking for material to nest with and also visiting the feeders too.

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

 The female Chaffinch collecting Spider's silk for her nest from our fence

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

Looking for insects on the lawn

During nesting time we also had at least one pair of Blackbirds visiting the garden looking for nesting material. they inadvertently managed to destroy quite a good proportion of my seedlings, as the female was using the compost they were planted in for her nest. After my initial despair, I protected the seedlings with plastic covers until nesting was over and there were no more problems. The female was quite a character and would even drink beer from trays we were using to trap slugs!

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

The male Blackbird patrolling our garden last year

Once the birds had nested and the young had fledged, a very noisy family of around fifteen Starlings started to visit us for quite a few weeks. They would raid the bird feeders at the break of dawn at about 5 am, making a hysterical racket and eating everything in the feeders within about ten minutes. We ended up rationing the food as otherwise we would have been spending an untold amount of money on bird food each week. Despite this, they were great entertainment and we are both hoping a family visits this year!

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

One of the young Starlings posing at the top of the the feeders

As well as insects and birds we have also had some mammalian visitors to the garden. I have always suspected there have been a few Wood Mice in the garden as I could see the trails they left on the lawn. I have to admit I am not not entirely keen on mice, mainly due to their extreme speed which always makes me jump. I have only seen a mouse in the garden on three or four occasions so I have reluctantly accepted their presence but I do try and keep bird food from the floor so they don't get too easy a meal. The last visitor I will introduce today is a much rarer fellow these days, than when I was a child. The Hedgehog population of the UK has declined by around ninety percent, so when I first spotted one in our garden when I was outside one night, I was really pleased as I had not seen one for years. Not only did we have one hedgehog but by the end of the summer in our first year in the house we had a whole family, with young Hedgehogs frequently feeding in the garden at night. We did not see them as often last year, which was a bit concerning, so we are hoping they will make a return in full force this year.

Copyright Robert Widdowson 2016

One of the Hedgehogs having a feed on some cat food in our garden