It's like Springwatch live !

[Wildlifehaven]

After a quiet winter and a slow start to spring, its hotting up here. Today we’ve seen 4 Pipestrelle bats fly out directly from our bat box put up last year, a small lizard in the veg bed and 2 hogs in the feeding area and heard a lot of huffing, blue tits trying to keep up with feeding, a thrush busy snailing any my first sighting of a house Martin and swallow all in the same day!! OMG my garden is heaven at the moment (to me anyway) like winning the wildlife lottery.

My hogs are stealthy not setting off the security light, put food out earlier ready but saw fat cat so decided to pop out and top up – but whilst creeping out saw a smaller hog guessing Igor running off at 90 mph whilst another hog possibly growler sat in the feeding station having supper completely ignoring me.

Poppped out later couldn’t see either hog but heard a lot of huffing. Hoping for some Spring time liaisons in the garden we have 3 boxes and one under the compost bin but so far none are occupied, seen a lot of poo (oh how life must be to get excited about poo, was describing hedgehog poo to my mum this afternoon afterwards I thought what an odd conversation!)

I love this time of year it’s action stations all round.

[Penny]

Wow Nina, you are so lucky to have bats and lizards. Very interested in your bat box, is it in a tree? We used to have lots of bats years ago, but I suspect that they lived in nearby barns which have long since been turned into houses. We still get a few and have often thought about installing a bat box.

The birds are very busy here too raising their young; thankfully I can now get to the bins without being dive bombed by over protective blackbirds! Last year I managed to get some really good photos of the baby robins and blackbirds, but this year they are keeping them very well hidden. We had a problem with sparrow hawks last year so they are probably being extra vigilant.

I could never understand why my coir basket liners never lasted very long and always finished up in shreds, until I noticed the birds raiding them for their nests. So this year I collected some horse hair from a local stables and filled a large fat ball feeder with it. In no time at all the birds have emptied its contents and my basket liners are still very much intact.

The neighbourhood cats have switched their attentions from the feeding stations and instead have been busy trying to dig their way into wood mouse headquarters. Our next door neighbours have a new kitten which finds the ever expanding hole in the lawn particularly amusing. I have got visions of me one day filling up the bird feeders only to disappear into a large sink hole beneath my feet!

Oh, and the hedgehogs have been very bust too; looking forward to the pitter patter if tiny feet very soon… 🙂

[Wildlifehaven]

Hi Penny

We live in a bungalow and the bat box is just under the eves above the living room window on a south facing wall. Our TV is in the same corner of the room on the inside as the bat box is on the outside, they don’t need high walls or quiet locations.

http://www.nhbs.com/title/176914/improved-crevice-bat-box

We went on a one day bat ecology course at our local wildlife trust met some bats and learnt a lot including how to identify bats using a bat detector and how to tell their poo from a mouses poo urgh (how – well a bats crumbles, a mouses smears hmmm) on the subject of poo again – really need to get out more! We know they are pipistrelles by the frequency on the bat detector and the noise made.

[Penny]

Hi Nina,

Thanks for the info, that’s very useful to know because we also live in a bungalow. I was wandering around the garden yesterday wondering where we could put a bat box that would be suitable, we do have a large tree one could go on, but getting it up there wouldn’t be easy. We did catch a fleeting glimpse of one on a hedgehog video not so long ago, so it would definitely be worth putting one up.

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