Feeding Garden Birds Through The British Seasons

Design details matter more than they might appear to. Good insect houses combine hollow stems, such as bamboo or reed, with drilled wood blocks offering a range of hole diameters, roughly 2 to 10mm, since different species use different sized cavities. Natural, untreated materials are preferable to anything varnished or chemically treated.

For gardeners wanting an alternative to chemical sprays, a soil-applied option is worth considering as a first step, and a good starting point is a range of slug nematodes for gardens suited to the pest in question.

Winter is one of the harder seasons for garden wildlife. Natural food becomes scarce, cold weakens smaller animals quickly, and many species rely on undisturbed shelter to see them through to spring rather than active foraging.

Design has a big influence on how well a pond gets used. A shallow, gently sloping edge, sometimes called a beach area, lets amphibians and insects get in and out easily, www.gardenwildlife.com and gives small mammals that fall in an escape route rather than a hazard. Planting in distinct zones, marginal plants at the shallow edge, floating plants across the surface, and oxygenating plants below, gives different creatures the cover and conditions they need.

Garden birds face different pressures depending on the time of year, and supplementary feeding is most valuable during two periods in particular: the late winter to early spring hungry gap, when natural food is scarce, and the breeding season, when adults are feeding hungry chicks.

Timing across the season is worth planning for deliberately, since gaps in flowering leave pollinators with nothing to forage on for weeks at a stretch. Leaving seed heads standing rather than cutting borders back in autumn also gives finches and other seed-eating birds a natural food source right through the colder months.