Wildlife on your doorstep

You don't need to live in the country, or even go there, to find amazing wildlife, a lot of it is right there on your doorstep, even if you live in the middle of a city!

We live about a mile and a half from the city centre, we have lived here for about a year and a half and have seen some lovely wildlife in our own garden! Loads of birds come to visit because Matthew has worked hard to put up lots of things to attract them such as bird boxes, bird baths and feeders, some of the birds we get are: goldfinches, sparrows, dunnocks, chaffinches, collared doves, wood pigeons, blackbirds, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, robins and starlings.

But it's not just birds that visit our garden, we also made a pond out of a washing up bowl, it is very small but we attracted frogs and found 4 frogs living there when we cleaned it out a bit earlier in the year (it had got so full of dead leaves that it was only a couple of inches deep!)

We have also been extremely lucky to have attracted several butterflies, damselflies and even a dragonfly into our garden by planting wildflowers and plants to lure them in! We also get quite a few moths fluttering around in the evenings, I'd love to make my own moth trap and find out what we get!

The best part about our very small garden is that last year we attracted a hedgehog and this spring he came back!

It really goes to show how much life there can be in a small space, so don't write your garden off just because it is small, plant some flowers, make your own pond, feed the birds and it will be full of life in no time!

When I lived with my dad we had some less common species visiting the garden in the winter, redwings and fieldfares visited, enjoying the berries on the tree behind his house (ok, technically it was someone else's garden) and a blackcap had joined them. I took these photos from my old bedroom window whilst in my pyjamas!

A lot of you probably get foxes in your garden or see them regularly, unfortunately foxes seem to be one of the animals I rarely see, even though by most accounts the city is overrun with them.

 

Within a short walk from my house at two parks; Waterloo and Wensum. Wensum Park is probably better for wildlife because it has the river running through it, the sign there shows lots of wildlife you might spot, I think this is a bit of an optimistic view of wildlife in the park and it looks fairly old but I like to think some of it can be found there. Last time I went I heard some plops in the water which could have been water voles (or rats, as they had turned out to be previously!) and there have been reports of otters there. I will be paying a few more visits when I can and will report if I see anything else exciting!

 

As I have said in a previous blog, the pond at Waterloo Park is FULL of tadpoles and tiny frogs at the moment, as well as waterboatmen and strange little whirligig beetles! Other things I have seen at Waterloo Park are thrushes, goldfinches, squirrels and butterflies.

I work right in the middle of the city, in a building surrounded by other buildings but even we manage to get a whole host of wildlife there, which the children I look after love it and I love showing them! We get lots of birds such as sparrows, pigeons, collared doves, blackbirds and the occasional magpie or jay. We get loads of creepy crawlies such as ladybirds, earwigs, centipedes and woodlice. These may not sound that interesting or exciting to you, but I can assure you they are to a toddler and there is nothing better than seeing their little faces light up when they can get up close to wildlife. A couple of years ago we attempted to rescue a swift who had crash landed in our garden, the story didn't end well unfortunately but we gave it our best shot and was lovely to get so close to these birds that you usually only see as tiny blobs screeching high above you! We've even had the odd squirrel and sparrowhawk passing through!

 

If you think that's not enough wildlife for you, Norwich Cathedral is home to a pair of Peregrine Falcons who have nested in a box put up by the Hawk and Owl Trust, this is the third year they have bred and successfully fledged 4 chicks this June, unforunately one didn't survive but last I heard the other 3 were doing very well :) They can be seen at the moment and if you head down to the cathedral the Hawk and Owl Trust have a stand with scopes and information, I think they are probably there until the end of July-ish, the adult peregrines can be seen there all year round and I often see one sitting on the crockets of the cathedral spire on my bus journey to work (with the naked eye, you don't always need binoculars!)

 

The last thing I'm going to tell you about is the Riverside Walk that runs past the cathedral, although it's very rare, we have spotted some wonderful wildlife there, the best three were a water vole in the pond near Cow Tower, a Kingfisher flying past, which we later found sitting in the branches below the Red Lion pub at Bishop's Bridge and Long Tailed Tits feeding on a fatball that someone had hung in a tree. There have also been reports of otters along the river too, although we have never been lucky enough to see them.

Phew! I think that is about all I have to tell you about at the moment. I hope it has inspired those of you who live in a city, have small gardens or think there is no wildlife near you to go out and see what you can find, as even the most unlikely places can surprise you!

Thanks for reading :)

Weekly Wildlife Round Up...

Hello!

Here's what I have been doing in the last week! Didn't get up to much at the start of the week but on Thursday evening we went to Minsere where we met up with my aunty and uncle for an evening of wildlife watching.

Unfortunately we didn't really see a great deal, such is the way with wildlife watching sometimes, and some of the best things we did see were too quick for a photo, such as the bearded tits and 3 of the fledgling woodpeckers that featured on Springwatch, we also sat in Canopy Hide for a while and heard something walking around but we didn't see it, we think it might have been a hedgehog.

What I did manage to get photos of was the Sand Martins, loads of them had landed in the reeds at Island Mere and then we went to see where they were nesting and saw some of the babies poking their heads out of the burrows.

 

 



 Before we headed home we drove up to Westleton Heath where we heard nightjars, we didn't go for a walk because it was almost pitch black but lovely to hear them!

On Saturday evening we had a lovely walk around Strumpshaw Fen, it was quite late in the day so no dragonflies or butterflies but we did see a lovely caterpillar, I don't know what he will turn into, I will try and find out and let you know! We also enjoyed watching the barn owl hunting, watching chinese water deer and hares grazing in the meadow and saw a water vole swimming across the water. As we were leaving we sat at Reception Hide for a while and a kingfisher came along.

On Sunday, Matthew was working at Minsmere so I went with him for a day pottering around Minsmere! Withink 5 minutes of sitting in Bittern Hide I had seen 3 bitterns flying past! They were too far away and moving too fast so I didn't even try for a photo and just preferred to watch them, the same as I did with the kingfisher that flew past too.

 

There were loads of meadow brown and ringlet butterflies around, so hard to get photos of as they flit about so quickly, but I did manage a few.

 

I saw another green woodpecker, it flew past me so I spent a while looking in the trees to see where it landed, turns out it was on the grass next to me and I didn't realise until it was too late for a photo!

 

No bearded tits today but lots of reed warblers flitting around and several juvenile herons all scruffy and prehistoric looking.

 

There were also a lot of fish to be seen, I don't really know anything about fish but there were a few stickelbacks near Island Mere, they are a very beautiful blue colour.

 

Oh, not forgetting the highland cows they now have grazing there, so cute!!



I think that's pretty much it, thanks for reading! I will leave you will this photo of a lovely common blue butterfly I saw on Saturday whilst in Dereham with my friend Liz. xxxx



Our Wild Honeymoon...

Hi again!

As most of my posts will be about wildlife in Norfolk/Suffolk, I thought I would add something a little bit different and write a blog about our honeymoon back in February.

We spent a week in a beautiful little cottage just over the border into Scotland, it was the perfect blend of luxury and wildlife watching, with a jacuzzi bath, open fire, four poster bed and a wildlife hub that consisted of cctv cameras all over the farm where we could watch badgers, otters and birds come and go as they pleased, there were also several bird feeders outside our front window, with hares and roe deer in the fields that we could watch over breakfast, lunch or tea! We couldn't recommend it highly enough and if you fancy a visit the website is: www.watchbadgers.co.uk

Going wildlife watching in Scotland in February is pretty risky but we could not have been more lucky with the weather, it was bright and sunny every day except for one, when we went to Edinburgh Zoo, and even then it brightened up later on.

On our first proper day we went into Berwick Upon Tweed, we walked along the pier to the lighthouse. We got very excited to see an eider duck, little were we to know that there are loads of them there, so we both went mad taking distant photos of the one we could see!
Matthew had done a little bit of research and had read reports of otters on the other side of the water so we headed over there and it was like the otter was just there waiting for us! He was happily swimming around amongst all the seals, then eventually caught something to eat and dragged it onto a little island to eat it. Was great to see on our first day, especially as I spent a year in 2012 looking for otters and never saw any until Boxing Day (luckily, since then I have had a lot more luck!)

That same day we also visited a sea side village called Eyemouth, being February it was very quiet but we saw loads of eiders here, probably about 50! Including a very pretty eclipse eider and lots of seals too!

 

We even managed to see some wildlife at Edinburgh Zoo, with a friendly robin taking food from Matthew's hand, but our highlights from that day were of course the pandas and a gorgeous baby koala!

 

 

In the evening after our trip to Edinburgh Zoo we took a walk to St. Abbs Head which is a beautiful cliff top walk along the coast, we saw some wonderful wildlife but we were losing the light so we didn't walk too far and a roe deer leapt out in front of us on the way back to the car! We went back the next day for a 4 mile walk, it was probably the best day of the whole week! There were hundreds of guillemots nesting on the cliffs, as well as razorbills out at sea, shags, oyster catchers, curlews, fulmars, a rock pipit, buzzard and one lone gannet flying about, but the highlight had to be the peregrines, they were calling and flying around over head and Matthew saw one stoop to catch some prey, unfortunately I missed it as I was too busy watching the other one! As we neared the end of the route we got very close to a hare that we scared out of some bushes and it ended up sitting on a wall, and we found loads of animal footprints in the mud, including a badger :) A great day and we were home for lunch!

 

We took it a bit steadier for the next couple of days and visitng Hirsel Country Park and Howick Hall and Gardens looking for red squirrels and hawfinches, we weren't successful with either but we did enjoy lovely views of woodpeckers, goldcrests, bullfinches and roe deer (again), and ate some lovely cake!!

 

Thanks for reading! If you want to see more of my photos there are some on flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31291506@N00/sets/72157644828759057/

 

 

:)