Birds and Garden

WILDLIFE AND GARDENS

Iain Ferguson Whatever the weather, spring is about to be ‘sprung’ with colourful flowers and excitement of new life emerging all around us.

While nature takes care of this, there are still plenty ‘opportunities’ to get involved with wildlife and, of course, the garden.

Many birds will now be busily building nests so will be foraging for building materials such as twigs, grass, moss and warm linings. You can help by not having a tidy garden with everything cleared away to make it pristine clean, leaving little nesting material.

Your pet can also play an important role here as we have found over the years that brushing the dog and leaving out the clumps of hair can lead to an almost immediate flurry of activity as our feathered friends hurriedly gather up as much as they can in their beaks and speedily fly off with it.

Keep up the feeding for garden visitors with peanuts, fat balls and seeds, not only for the birds, but for the animals coming out of hibernation who will be desperate for something to eat.

This year we are installing a ‘bug hotel’ to encourage them to set up home and flourish. This is not only interesting to watch as they develop in their many forms, but also provides a natural source of food for other animals. We also ‘leave ‘ a good covering of fallen leaves in the garden which provide great breeding conditions for insects which our resident blackbirds find especially attractive. Likewise, our young human visitors love to go on bug hunts to see what they can find.

Depending on the weather, it is also a good time to plant shrubs and trees, although most recommendations were to start this in November, with March set as the final month. Frozen ground may have prevented earlier planting but, hopefully, things will be a bit more thawed out by now, making for easier digging and more opportunity for the roots to spread. Softer ground also means that by digging down deep you can break up and clear out the roots of persistent weeds.