Wildlife watching in lockdown

By CHRIS SPERRING MBE

I HOPE you and your families are safe and well during these uncertain times.

The strain of lockdown on our physical and mental wellbeing will affect us individually in many different ways, of course (at the time of writing) we remain in this situation to protect our essential and keyworkers who in turn are trying to save the lives of the sick and keep the country going. If we keep that in mind, then that can help us all get through.

But another way is turning to nature to help, and indeed many people have. Whether you’re on your country estate, in a suburban garden – large or small – or even block of flats there will be some part of nature, or indeed some view of the outside world, you can watch, listen to, or even educate yourself about.

If you have a smartphone, laptop or desktop computer then try finding some live streaming wildlife webcams. The Hawk and Owl Trust have started streaming live webcams and, along with their peregrine falcon webcams, there is now a Somerset Barn Owl webcam; just go to https://youtu.be/ShKB3VZoKjQ to watch the Somerset Barn Owls live.

If you’re able to carry out your permitted once-a-day walk, then in my area I’ve created a game for families to find ten spring flowers, most of which can be found along hedgerow and woodland walks; hopefully this is both enjoyable and educational at the same time.

Birds are obvious by sight and sound at present, the dawn chorus will reach its peak over the beginning of May so it is well worth sitting in your garden or just opening the window (weather permitting) and just literally let the sound in.

On international dawn chorus day, I will be doing a Facebook live from my garden beaming out my garden birds to the world. If you’re interested in finding out which birds are singing then join me live in my garden on https://www.facebook.com/Chris.SperringMBE – the date is Sunday, May 3rd.

For those of us with gardens, the lockdown period has so far been blessed with some amazing sunny days, which has given us (our family) the space we need, but also interesting education opportunities as well. So far, the whole family is cataloguing different groups of plants and animals that live in the garden, indeed my three-year-old’s insect list is enormous; so the point of this is, of course, he’s learning many other things besides the actual animal of his focus and also some very important life lessons.

Vitamin D is said to important for the immune system and many other things as well, the sun can be an important source of it. If you have pets such as dogs or cats, it’s always interesting to watch them absorb some sunshine but, unlike we humans, they don’t overdo it by burning themselves; notice how they seek shelter from the sun after a while. Warning: too much sun will burn you, little bits of basking in the sun won’t.

Whilst I have been sitting outside, I have been looking up from the garden and counting the different species of bird that fly over my urban garden. So far, over the course of three weeks, I’m up to 54 species; these include all the crow family and now recently I’ve added swallow, house martin and, flying really high overhead, swifts (on April 19th).

Birds of prey have been really interesting, with red kite and osprey flying over, along with peregrine, buzzard, sparrowhawk and kestrel, and all this just by looking up from my garden!

Please stay safe everyone.

Bugle

Wood splurge

Yellow archangel