When I prune the trees around my garden (mostly in February) I end up with small branches etc too woody to compost, I add these to my ‘habitat pile’.
I put the branches in vertically and the sparrows especially love these leafless perches.
In the early part of the year, I festoon the piled sticks with ‘hay’ cut from the ‘wild’ grass area in October and stashed under a hedge to keep it dry (much appreciated by hedgehogs during the winter). This provides a popular source of nesting material, along with feathers and cat fur presented in cage bird-feeders.
Anyway the pile gradually breaks down and sinks, home to all kinds of insects and mice etc.
This year I’ve tunnelled into the bottom and made some access tunnels for hedgehogs, supported by some old bricks so that they can get into the thick of it all easily.
As well as the access tunnels, I have a couple of hedgehog boxes ready for winter hibernation and a couple of feeding stations fashioned from a few bricks and a roof.
Last night, as dusk was falling, I put out plates of catfood in jelly into the feeding-stations, then laid a twig across each of the access tunnel entrances, the hedgehog houses and the feeding stations.
A few ours later before going to bed I checked.
All twigs had been pushed aside, one feeding station needed replenishing and the other had a diner just about to tuck in, so a busy evening in the garden for my spikies. 🙂
All twigs replaced.
This morning I collected the empty plates from the feeding-stations and removed the presents of poo left behind. One of the houses and one of the access tunnels still had the twigs in place, but it will all be different tonight.
Off out to clean and re-charge the bird-feeders now.
