wildlife Archives - Eco Thrifty Living

Don’t let wasps ruin your lunch!

Zoe — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 09:02:00 +0000

Wasps are not the most popular buzzy creatures out there. They have a pretty terrible reputation for ruining alfresco summer meals and some are killing honey bees, but wasps are not always annoying and they are not all villains. In fact they are actually really beneficial in gardens.

If you garden, wasps are among your best friends. The common wasp is a top predator — capturing more than 4 million prey-loads, weighing 7.2lb per acre, every season. Their favourite prey is aphids, rose-killers and tormentors of every gardener’s favourite plants. (Taken from Why all civilised people should love wasps)

That’s all well and good isn’t it, but you still don’t want them buzzing around your food while you are trying to eat it. There are lots of ways to deal with this problem, some better or worse for the wasp and the environment. This method tries to minimise the impact on both and won’t cost you a penny. Essentially all you need to do is trap the wasps that come along while you are eating in an upturned glass and then carefully release them when you are done. It makes it easier if you put a bit of bait on the table or picnic rug for them to land on and if you are feeling kind you could even leave it in there with them. To minimise harm to the wasps make sure they are not left in direct sunlight and they are released as soon as you have finished eating,

We did this last summer and instead of feeling annoyed by the wasps or retreating inside, wasp catching, observing and then releasing became a fun activity that my kids got pretty good at!

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Wildlife in our garden and easy ways to help your local wildlife!

Zoe — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 10:27:00 +0000

My reasons for being eco-friendly mainly centre around wanting a healthy and happy future for myself and generations to come and my way of approaching it so far has mainly involved thinking about reducing the rubbish my household produces, trying to source sustainable products and trying to make the most of everything I have. I’ve never really felt that connected to local wildlife though or quite got what direct impact I can have on it, but things are starting to slowly change. We have a lovely butterfly poster in our kitchen which identifies local butterflies and I was really excited that over the last couple of weeks there have been some red admirals (which I identified via the poster) fluttering around our garden one of which is pictured above. Every so often I do a bit of bug hunting with the kids and we find ladybirds, woodlice, ants, beetles and other bugs.

I started to learn about hedgehogs and their needs when a local lady asked if we would have a hedgehog tunnel in our garden for a few days, but sadly we didn’t spot any. More recently though, we also took part in a university study where they put a night vision motion sensitive camera in our garden for a week and it was really exciting when they spotted these animals:

I also grow lots of bee friendly plants like lavender and I have taken the kids to a local museum called the Booth museum quite a few times. It is full of stuffed birds and a few other animals and some animal skeletons. It was only after a few visits that the birds finally got to me. I started to realise some of them were supposed to be local and I had never seen them before and a friend of mine told me they went on a bird song walk with someone identifying all the different bird songs, which I would really love to do when I get a chance. Apparently there are loads of bats in my local area too, which I have never seen. Like I said I never really quite got what I could do for my local wildlife, but I started to realise that although it might seem insignificant just learning a little about and looking out for sightings of your local wildlife can actually be really helpful because:

If you don’t know it exists then you can’t do anything to help it!
If you have a garden there are lots of small changes you can make to help the wildlife including planting flowers that attract bees and butterflies, to making holes in the perimeters of your garden so hedgehogs can access them to installing bird baths or bat boxes and more!
You can help contribute to local studies and national data. There are lots of wildlife websites where you can sign up and share your sightings and you don’t need a garden for this! This can then help identify trends in increase or decline in species and where efforts might need to be focused to help species in trouble.
It can increase your enthusiasm about it! I found that when I started to try to spot hedgehogs I became more interested in them and it was really exciting to finally see that one had visited our garden. When I planted a load of lavender because the bees liked them it made me more excited about seeing bees on them and every so often I count how many bees we have on the lavender plants and feel a bit miffed if there aren’t enough bees on them!

Another benefit of wildlife spotting/ learning about local wildlife is that it is a great source of free fun! I didn’t have to pay to go into the Booth museum or to join in with the local studies and I got the butterfly poster for free a few years ago when it was being given out at local libraries. It’s well worth finding out what is going on in your local area and having a look online for things like bird, bug or butterfly identification charts and it is a great activity to get kids involved in (if you have any!). I’ve really enjoyed getting to know more about the wildlife in my garden and finding out about some of the visitors it has in the middle of the night as well as in the beautiful sunshine! I also would really like to learn more! How about you? How do you feel about your local wildlife?

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Footprints, but no hedgehogs :(

Zoe — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 23:03:00 +0000

When was the last time you saw a hedgehog? We spotted one in our compost heap a few years ago, but haven’t seen one since. Hedgehogs populations have reduced in numbers in recent years and there is a monitoring project going on in my area to try and work out how hedgehogs are doing locally. My family took part in the monitoring experiment last week and for 5 evenings we put out food, ink and paper in a hedgehog monitoring tunnel, hoping for some hog prints in the morning (read more here). Sadly we didn’t get any hedgehog prints. Every morning, the prints looked like the picture above. The culprits were mice and slugs.

It was a bit disappointing, but we are going to join in with the monitoring experiment in the spring and maybe try putting the tunnel in a different place to see if we have any luck.

To cheer ourselves up we did a bit of baking and made some hedgehog bread rolls!

The kids ones turned out better than mine as they made deeper cuts in the dough than I did. Also most of the eyes fell out as they needed to be pushed in deeper and the cocoa nibs didn’t cook very well! I’ll know for next time to use raisins and make deep cuts!

Having a slightly hedgehog themed half term week we also drew some hedgehogs and named them! This is Hex the hedgehog drawn by my son.

If you want to monitor the hedgehogs in your local area, then why not get a tunnel (or make one), they cost around £15 on this website here (not an affiliate link in case you are wondering) and if you sign up to the Hedgehog Street website here you could become a champion for your road and start a monitoring project in your area! I think I have convinced my mum to start up a hedgehog street in her road in the spring and I’m very tempted to get one for the kids school to use! It is a low cost, bit of fun that gets neighbours together and hopefully will help to turn things around for hedgehogs as more people become aware of what they can do to help them (for more tips on how you can help them see here).

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Hoping for a hog in my hedge!

Zoe — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:50:00 +0000

Did you know that hedgehogs are called hedgehogs, because they sound like hogs and they like hedges! It makes sense, but it isn’t something I had thought about before until today when I met Becky Walton of HK Hedgehogs.

Becky is a local hedgehog heroine. She spotted a hedgehog in her garden a couple of years ago, became interested in everything hedgehog related and got her neighbours involved on a grand scale!

Hedgehog populations are in decline and they need our help. Luckily there are small changes that anyone with a garden can make to help them. Hedgehogs are noctural, during the daytime they sleep and they come out at night to hunt, travelling up to a mile looking for food! They need safe sheltered places they can hide away to sleep in the day time and they need connected gardens to travel across at night time on the search for food.

You can help hedgehogs the most by doing the following:

Leave holes in fences for hedgehogs to get from garden to garden.
Create places for hedgehogs to hide – hedges, large bushes, piles of leaves, logs, open compost heaps or even make / buy a hedgehog hut
Feed them – but NOT milk or bread instead give them (taken from Hedgehog Street):

‘Meat-based dog or cat food
Unsalted chopped or crushed peanuts
Sunflower hearts
Dried meal worms’

Install a pond, or if you have one already make sure that there is a gentle slope that they can use to get in and out of the pond.
Avoid using slug pellets and be careful that netting isn’t left lying around for hedgehogs to get tangled up in.
Instigate/ take part in hedgehog monitoring projects in your local area.
Raise awareness of the issues facing hedgehogs and what can be done about them – there is lots of help and resources for how to do that on the Hedgehog Street site here.

Becky started up a Hedgehog street in my local area, has run events to raise awareness of the challenges facing hedgehogs and what people can do to help, taken part in a University hedgehog project, been on on Springwatch on TV and is currently running a hedgehog monitoring project with over 50 households taking part! She will also be speaking at the Day of the Hedgehog on the 21st November 2015 in Telford read more here.

I’m really excited as Becky dropped off a hedgehog monitoring tunnel today (as pictured at the top of the post), so that we can take part in her current project. We have lots of hedgehog friendly features already so I’m hoping we will see some hedgehog prints in the morning.

The tunnel is simply designed, it has two sheets of A4 paper on each side, a bowl of hedgehog food in the middle and strips of ink either side of the food. The idea is the hedgehog will have to tread in the ink before it reaches the food and then it will leave prints on it’s way out of the tunnel (the picture shows it opened out, but it folds up into a triangular tunnel).

Becky left us a great sheet showing some of the potential footprints we might see and what kinds of animals would leave them. Each morning we need to change the paper, make sure there is enough ink and top up the food and I will be doing it for 5 days. I will report back during the week about which footprints if any we get! Hope we get some visitors!

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