Wild In The Garden: November

Practical advice on how to create a wildlife friendly garden, from Cheshire Wildlife Trust.

Although February can be bleak and cold, there are signs of spring if you know where to look. Snowdrops are out and other spring bulbs are poking green spikes out from the seemingly dead earth. Hazel is the first tree to put out catkins, and the beautiful yellowy tassels are fully out by now. Birds are beginning to sing, signalling thhe start of the breeding season. If you have not yet put up a bird nest box in the garden, now is the ideal time.

Down in the garden pond frogs are spawning. Frogs start to breed before any other British amphibian, and it is not uncommon to find clumps of spawn encased in ice on a frosty morning - it does not seem to do any harm! If you are lucky you will see a whole mass of frogs wriggling around in the shallow water. Each male attempts to grab a female and hold her in a vice-like grip under her armpits. He will hang on like this until she lays her eggs and he has the chance to fertilise them.

At this time of year we get many queries from people thinking they have too much frog spawn in their ponds, and wondering what to do with the excess. The answer is - do nothing, you are not going to be over-run with little frogs. Tadpoles and young frogs are the natural prey of many predators, including water beetles, dragonfly nymphs, fish, birds, small mammals and even other frogs.

Nature has a wonderful ability to balance things out, so you will never end up with more frogs than your garden can support. Don’t take spawn or frogs to another pond, this can spread diseases or invasive pond plants. Also, if the receiving pond does not already have its own frogs, it may be unsuitable for frogs in some way. Although frogs can jump out and surprise the nervous gardener, in general they are the gardener’s friend, eating slugs along with flies, worms and other invertebrates. Frogs are in decline in the wider countryside, mostly due to the loss of farm ponds. Our gardens, with their many ponds, make ideal habitat for frogs, so your garden really is your own nature reserve!

If the weather is still wintery, garden birds will still be struggling to find enough to eat; we can make a real difference by putting out extra food. In icy conditions small garden birds need to eat 30 to 40 per cent of their own bodyweight in food daily just to survive - and shorter daylight hours means less time to find that food.

Feeding the birds need not cost a fortune, as well as commercial bird seed you can put ut bread, cooked potatoes, grated cheese or fruit. The greater variety of food you provide, the greater the variety of species of birds will appear. Tits and finches will readily come to a high-level seed dispenser, and the tits are especially agile, quite capable of hanging upside-down under a peanut dispenser. Fat balls and blocks are full of energy and are popular with many species. Chaffinches, sparrows, thrushes and robins prefer to feed at ground level, although they will use a bird table. Blackbirds and thrushes like fruit and will appreciate apples left out of the lawn.

Clean water is just as important as food. If you have a pond with shallow margins birds will come to bathe as well as drink. If not, put out a shallow pan of water. In freezing weather this will have to be refreshed every day, but it’s worth the effort as this is when access to water is vital.

For further information please contact: Cheshire Wildlife Trust, Grebe House, Reaseheath, Nantwich, Cheshire, CW5 6DG. Tel: 01270 610180. Web: www.wildlifetrust.org.uk/cheshire

Sue Tatman

Cheshire Wildlife Trust Gardening Officer

statman@cheshirewt.cix.co.uk