The Mating Season. March 12th

 The first frogspawn appeared when there was ice on the pond most mornings. A few days later we have slightly warmer conditions, and every day we can watch from the kitchen window. The surface is in perpetual motion as male frogs splash and swim in search of a female. Some of them must be successful, for the number of blobs of spawn has increased slightly.

There is no photo of this, because as soon as I get within range the frogs (maybe half a dozen) dive down and disappear. 

In an earlier post, about bird-feeders, I commented about the relative lack of birds during the winter, and the expectation of seasonal migration. Well, in the last few days (that warmer weather, maybe) there have been changes. The foraging blackbirds every day are clearly a pair, male and female. For most of the winter we were visited only by a male. We have not seen a starling since, I think, September. But yesterday a pair were at the fat-balls. There is a fairly substantial evergreen two gardens away, and I think they nest there. Certainly in previous years we have seen flocks of young starlings in April and May gobbling up the fat-balls. Something similar happens with magpies - though we have seen one or two of those over the winter.

A very pleasing first sighting of spring was goldfinches. After a winter without them, three were on the bird-feeder (sunflower hearts) on Wednesday. Perhaps they were just passing through, but certainly in previous years we have had families on the feeders in April and May. No doubt every year will be different. (Memo: Clean bird feeders.)

There are many beautiful pieces of writing about spring. Lots of glorious poems one can think of. Not as well known as it should be is George Orwell's "Some thoughts on the Common Toad". Do read it. Here is the link to it.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/some-thoughts-on-the-common-toad/ 

Much of the news is depressing. But - and this is Orwell's message - we can still enjoy the spring. 

March 6th. Frogspawn

 Last night I returned home after a couple of nights in London. I went out into the garden with a torch, just in case, and this is what I saw.

This is particularly pleasing because it shows that some of the frogs that laid eggs last year have found places to survive the winter and are able to breed again this year. Their children who were tadpoles last year are still too young. 

If you are ever waiting for a train at Euston, St Pancras or King's Cross (it happens a lot if you live in Edinburgh) it is well worth going 400 metres or so north of King's Cross to find this.

Camley Street Natural Park is a lovely place to spend a few minutes. A volunteer warden and I chatted for a bit.

They have, of course, more space than the owners of small patches for whom this blog is written. But one can always learn something new that may be worth trying in a small space. They have more than one log pile:

I expect we all do. But they are trying out a new idea which is explained in these two photos.

There is surely no reason why we should not make all our walls and fences bioreceptive. I will let you know how I get on. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy watching the frogspawn develop. 

February 21st

 As far as I can work out from books the ideal time to get some of the growth out of the pond is before things start coming to life - certainly before any frogspawn is laid - and after the water is too cold to bear. So today was the day. Storm Franklin was not affecting Edinburgh and it was pleasantly sunny. So the pond that looked like this

was made to look like this.

One very considerable advantage of a small pond is that I can reach all of it, and the whole job -dredging out excessive growth, cutting back dead stems and trimming the grass round the edge - took less than an hour. I hope the plants that flowered last year reappear this; and I like to have some open water so that I can look into the depths and see any pond-life that may be swimming about.

To my surprise today a pond skater emerged. It seems very early in the year. This one skated across from one dark recess under the bank to another. There was also some minute creature, smaller than a pin-head, jumping on the surface. I have not yet managed to identify it. 

It is important that the plants pulled out are left where any mini-beasts that live in them can make their way back to the water. My shallow end makes that easy.

You can see that I have left the dead stems of the tall purple loosestrife for the moment. I do not know if anything likes to overwinter in them - it is certainly possible - but I think they are very attractive. And all the time I worked, a blackbird was singing and singing, declaring that these gardens are his territory.

Later that night I dug out a book which should belong to all amateur pond owners like me:

You may guess from the price that I have had it a long time. From it I learn about pond-skaters: "The adults are long-lived and many species are capable of surviving through the winter by hibernating". I hope the one I woke up can get back to sleep again. 

And then I found that the jumping pin-head was indeed a springtail: "A few species are found on water, where they occur all the year round". I ought really to check these books before posting the blog - but I guess this slovenliness fits with my main point that wildlife gardening is for everyone, not just for dedicated naturalists. 

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Four Habitats

 This is the last blog-post about the general set-up of the wildlife areas in the garden. After this they will, I hope, chronicle developments as they happen from early spring onwards. But there are a few more things to point out that show how one can practise wildlife gardening in a small space, if that is all you have available.

The Wildflower Meadow

This looks like a patch of rough grass, allowed to get out of hand. Three years ago I lifted the turf from a one metre wide strip of lawn. I guess it is about two and a half metres long. On the bare soil I sowed it with "Urban Pollinator Mix" from Scotia Seeds. It has been rather overcrowded with Ox-eye daisies, and some of the plants enticingly on the label have not appeared so far. But is only a very limited site, and there are about half a dozen flowering plants. I hope I can show you them later in the year..

The water feature (we call it the ditch) is just using up the left-over pond liner. You may remember that I bought far too much. No special effort has been made to get native plants for it, and some of the pretty ones I bought seem to have died. But the two together - meadow and ditch - turned out last summer to be just what the baby frogs wanted. They could hide in the long grass or under the flagstones, and occasionally leap into the water if frightened. You will notice that the left hand end of the ditch has been made so that it is easy to climb out, a very important consideration. I did put some oxygenating weed and some pond snails in the water.

The Cornfield Annuals

This looks as unprepossessing a bit of mud as you could wish to find in a garden. But in late summer, I hope it will be blaze of colour and humming with pollinating insects. Every Eastertide at our church we give out a teaspoonful of seed of wildflower annuals, roughly enough for a square metre.  (Scotia Seeds again; there is a lot to be said for getting fairly local plants if possible, and this garden is in Scotland.) We find that they self seed vigorously, so this area hardly needs new sowing. But they work well in pots too. This is what they looked like last summer.

The main work is weeding out those other self seeded plants which one happens not to want. There's no rule about this, of course.

Ivy

It is agreed by all the books that ivy is an outstanding plant for wildlife. I know this is true from my previous garden. Quite apart from invertebrates, birds eat the berries and find shelter, if not nests, in the foliage. It can also be a menace if it grows rampant and unchecked. Here I have, as you see, planted a couple of cuttings from a local park. But the main point of the trellis is so that every tendril that strays outside it shall be ruthlessly cut off. We shall see if this works.

The Almost Hedge

One of the things I liked most in our old garden was the wild hedge. (It was not, in fact, a boundary.) About ten metres long, and with seven or eight varieties of native trees, some bought (hawthorn), some grown from seed collected by the wayside (guelder rose, oak and beech) and some just turned up (ash and elder and hazel).You can see in the photo what I have here. There is a discrete pile of logs, with some magnificent moss. Because we decided against a compost heap - a matter of space, and we do  buy bags of compost made from our Garden Rubbish collection - I made a little cylinder of chicken wire and fill it with leaves, twigs, rotten apples and so on. The shrubs on either side are not "wild", but the birds who perch on them don't seem to mind. The bramble just turned up, and is not allowed to wander far.

Those of you who have read this blog from the beginning with know that this series of posts was inspired by one sentence from Colin Stafford-Johnson in his "Wild Gardener" programmes on BBC2: "Anyone who's got a little bit of land can make the land better for nature." I hope these introductory posts have seen that even without much space, and a good deal of that given over to lawns, "exotic" shrubs and so so, you can still try to make it better for nature. If you never use pesticides and herbicides, and provide a bit of water, you are unlikely to go far wrong. 

My Big Garden Birdwatch

 Those of you who read my post about the birdfeeders in our garden (15/12/21) will not be surprised to learn that the results for our hour of The Big Garden Birdwatch were unspectacular. On Friday I was away. Saturday was too windy. This morning i was otherw1se engaged. So 12.20-1.20 it was.

These were the birds seen. One robin turned up at once and was pleased to get at the scattered mealworms first. It was closely followed by a male blackbird, which preferred the fat sprinkles. We usually get half a dozen sparrows every morning, but this time there were just three. Because of old eyes I use binoculars to check, even at this short distance, and was glad to confirm a dunnock; I do like them a lot, so neat and unassuming. A blue tit made such a brief visit - a quick snatch of a sunflower heart, that I nearly missed it. I did miss something similar, for it came and went before I could get focused; it may have been a coal tit, but I did not enter it in my records.

After 40 minutes a fluffy black and white cat came over the fence. It withdrew before I could get my water-pistol pointed. Had it been a dog I could have pursued the owner, but cats are above the law.

Wood pigeons are regulars with us. During this hour there were three. In fact five minutes after the hour was over there were four - but not listed. I expected two magpies, but only one came. I wonder whether its companion has met with an accident.

And that was it. Not very exciting; but I do enjoy watching even these familiar birds. The Garden Birdwatch is not a competition as to who has the most, or the most exotic, but a scientific survey where accurate data is everything. If I want exotic I can walk less than ten minutes and hope to see dippers, goosanders, grey wagtails and a kingfisher. But the Water of Leith does not, I hope, run through our property even in flood. 

The Pond

 I think that every garden should have some sort of water feature. A wild pond is hard to beat. As soon as we moved into our new house I dug a pond. I shall refer occasionally to the pond at our old house, because I do urge those of you who have space to make a bigger one than I have now. The old one was about 3 metres by four metres. My present one is 1 metre by 1.9 metres.

The Pond

You can see that it is not very ambitious, but I am pleased with it and it adds enormously to the wildlife garden. Here are some photos of it being made. 

Turf cut away.

It's important to get the sides level

I bought too much liner. But better than too little

Not finished, but already in use.

The New Pond

This all happened in 2017. As you can see, it was used at once by birds for bathing. Sparrows, blackbirds and starlings use it quite a lot in the summer.

The plants shown on the diagram were bought that first summer. They were all planted into aquatic compost in the bottom of the pond, not left in pots. They may move around a bit to find the depth they like, and their roots may be a useful habitat for invertebrates. The most important plants are the two oxygenators, Hornwort and Spiked milfoil. The other really important thing is the snails. We brought in a few from a large lake in a park, and there are now dozens. They help keep the water clear of algae by grazing on it every spring.

Pond snails among the Hornwort

One the irritating things about some wildlife garden writers is the way they assure readers that, if only they prepare the right habitat, wildlife will definitely arrive. Well, at our old house (nearer the city centre) a frog was sitting in the pond the day after it was filled - like the sparrows here - and palmate newts soon turned up as well. Apart from anything else they liked eating tadpoles. Here, after two years, there were no signs of any amphibians, so I imported a little frogspawn. It takes two years for frogs to reach breeding age, but in the spring of 2021 this happened.

Frogspawn

Several of the tadpoles eventually emerged as little frogs, so we hope they are the start of a successful population. 

This is January. My plan is that, as the year goes on, I shall be able to show you flowers and invertebrates and frogs. If you have room for a larger pond... Well, at the old house we had a pair of Mallard ducks mating most years (and once for a day some ducklings). We also often had a heron arrive. I once saw it eat three frogs in ten minutes, so I tried to provide a sheltered spot, under chicken wire. We do not have room for a heron here, though last summer one did perch on the garage roof and studied the problem, before deciding that our space was a bit too enclosed for a large bird.

Yesterday I removed dead leaves from the water and my fingers froze. There's a good deal of clearance work to do before the end of February (I am not planning to make a swamp) but I am hoping for slightly warmer water. 

Foxes tonight

 

So far my posts on this wildlife garden blog have been general background, and I have a few more of those planned. But here is an up-to-date item of the sort I hope to get onto later, when things start to move in the spring. But nature won’t wait.

 

Tonight at about 9.30pm I happened to notice that something had switched on the safety light at the back of the house. You know the sort of thing – to deter intruders. I guessed there might be a fox, so I cautiously raised a blind. There was a fine big fox. But then out of the shadows came another, smaller. I was enjoying watching them snuffling at the pond, which is surely frozen, when there emerged from a corner a third, of the smaller size. My guess is that it was a mother and two younger ones. Then the light went out.

 

Urban foxes are common round here – and in many places. Their determined burrowing, and tendency to leave droppings scattered about can make them a nuisance. Their biggest nuisance value in our garden is their appetite for any fruit that happens to be within reach. One took pears off the lower branches a couple of summers ago.

This summer they stripped almost all the plums off our little tree, even breaking down some branches (the tree is very young and growing) in the process.

I am also fairly certain it was a fox that pulled a plant out of the pond, pot and all (I had not yet got round to planting it), presumably searching for grubs. 

About a mile away, on the edge of some woodland, badgers occasionally come into gardens. I would be thrilled to see one, but I think they could be seriously destructive of a town garden if in the mood. I'll settle for foxes. I'll see in the morning if they have made their presence felt.