New Homes for the New Year

'Bee and Bug Biome'

Having talked about getting one for some time, and with a desire to find at least one Christmas present that would serve some useful purpose, we are now the proud owners of a ‘bee and bug biome’ for the garden. Having recently moved, the intention is to make our medium-sized garden as wildlife friendly as possible this coming year and well, we have to start somewhere, so here we start...

Gardener's friend - a 7-spot Ladybird (Coccinella 7-punctata)

Hopefully in time this bug hotel should provide shelter to beautiful insects such as ladybirds and lacewings (both friends of gardeners as predators of aphids) and may also provide a home for solitary bees. The guidance for ideal siting is that it should be in a sunny spot facing South or South-East but with some shelter from the worst of the elements. (We have some trellis that will fit the description, it won't stay on the picnic table!)   

Lacewing - aphid predators, with the most beautiful eyes!

Christmas provided an excuse (if one was needed) to buy a ready-made insect home but of course they’re easy to make, and there are others we plan to make and try out. I was amazed doing a quick internet search at the sheer variety of ideas for creating homes for insects from the very simple to some quite spectacular 'mansions'. 

Under construction - cub scouts making homes for insects

Our local RSPB Wildlife Explorers group, as one small part of their ‘giving nature a home’ initiative have been showing children how to make a simple insect home/shelter using a sturdy cardboard tube filled with natural items such as straw, hay, moss, leaves and pine cones, as well as rolled up corrugated card. A lot of fun for the kids to make, great for insects and arachnids, and a little bit of mess involved too!

Solitary bee on Tansy wildflowers

A friend has a hugely successful solitary bee hotel, when I saw it last summer there were no vacancies and it was literally buzzing with all the activity of solitary bees coming and going. Although this was a bought bee hotel, it is essentially just a block of wood drilled with a few dozen holes 6/7 millimetres in diameter with an apex roof – easy enough to recreate.

We’ve also inherited a small log pile tucked away at the back of the garden. Whether intentional or not, it looks like it should be a great spot for insects and amphibians to shelter and/or hibernate - a mix of larger and smaller logs and cuttings in a partially shaded area of the garden (so hopefully retaining humidity sufficiently for any insect/amphibian inhabitants without becoming too cold). We'll have to wait and see if we have amphibian visitors to this garden, previously we would see both common frogs and common toads in the garden (despite not having a pond there - that's something on the list of things to do here for spring), and a few areas of garden were left to go a little wild with areas of longer grass, and piles of fallen leaves left in situ to benefit them. 

Common frog (Rana temporaria), well camouflaged amongst fallen leaves in our old garden 

Christmas Eve and a first blog post

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to visit this blog. A little bit of background - my name is Jan and I have started this blog to document my ‘wildlife year’ for 2015 as part of BBC Wildlife's local patch reporters project. My 'patch' is East Cheshire and I live close to the borders with Derbyshire and Staffordshire. I have always had a love of wildlife and the natural environment and I care deeply about animal welfare and conservation issues. I am a licenced bird ringer for the British Trust for Orthinology (BTO) and have been involved with their work since 2008 as a volunteer.

 
Also I am a keen amateur wildlife photographer - I have a DSLR camera (a Nikon D7000) and since buying a macro lens in 2012, macro photography has become my main area of interest – I find the detail the lens reveals fascinating, and have surprised myself with how much I have really enjoyed watching the behaviour of insects and learning so much more about them. My respect and admiration of these tiny creatures has increased exponentially!

I shall look forward to posting more in the very near future, but in the meantime it's time to say Merry Christmas and sign off with a lighthearted card of a Female Black Darter Dragonfly.

Jan