Grey Wagtail

03/10/2009 by nigel.

A new first time visitor to the garden, a Grey Wagtail.

The first time I saw the bird was on one of the bird table feeds. It was a little difficult to indent the bird as it moved in and out of the cam view very quickly. Fortunately its been back few times now.
I was able to get some pictures of it with the 400mm lens from one of the upstairs windows.

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YouTube Channel

20/06/2009 by nigel.

I have created a ukgardenwildlife YouTube Channel and I’m in the process of moving all of the original videos over along with some new ones.
Originally I used Google videos but you can no longer upload to that service. So rather than keep embedding videos into ever growing web pages I decide to make a dedicated YouTube channel where all of the videos can be found in one place.
This also enables people to subscribe and comment on the videos…

So please feel free to subscribe to the channel and leave your comments..

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Pond Cam Back On-line

14/06/2009 by nigel.

Today I decided to put the Pond Cam back on line. As there are only 8 camera feeds I had to take one of the other feeds off-line to accommodate the Pond Cam. As the bird box has had no takers this year I have taken that off-line until next spring when hopefully it will gain some residents.

The Cam is a little misty at the moment, this normally happens when the Cam is first placed in the water. It should clear after a day or two.

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ukgardenwildlife Forums

14/06/2009 by nigel.

I have added a message board to the website. I get asked a lot of questions via email about the website, the techie side of things as-well as the wildlife that we have managed to attract to the garden. Generally the same questions are asked so I decided the best place for the Q&A would be a place where everyone could have access to the information.

So the ukgardenwildlife forums were created……………………………..

Please help get the forums off the ground by creating an account and give a little introduction about yourself..

Happy Posting..

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So a couple of months on…..

07/06/2009 by nigel.

The pond is now teaming with life, there are all sorts of bugs swimming and living in the pond. Larvae, snails, pond-skaters, water boatman, frogs to name but a few. I need to get out there with an identification book.

The plants are growing nicely. Along with the plants that we purchased I have taken some plants from the fish pond and added those to the wildlife pond one of which being a large Canna lilly.
We have planted some grasses around the edge of the pond, again some of which we purchased and others that were given to us by a friend who had recently removed their pond.

We were also given some lumps of rock that I have used to line the back edge of the pond and also create a small water feature in the guise of a small waterfall. Although the pond was slowly clearing I felt it needed a little water movement. So I fitted a pump only with the sole job to move the water around. The waterfall also helps to oxygenate the water.

All of the plants the we planted in the spring have also sprung to life. Where we had bare twigs we now have lots of green…

There is a noticeable increase in bees and butterflies to the garden along with lots of other bugs. This in-turn has seen an increase in birds.

We have also seen lots of damselflies around the pond.. Mating and laying eggs. And in the recent hot weather we had a visit from two large dragonflies, again these were mating and the female was dipping and laying here eggs.

The lilly in the fish pond has also taken off this year…

Can you spot the fish..?

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ACAP Phase 2 “A Wildlife Pond”

08/04/2009 by nigel.

OK I have to make a confession.. This blog is at the moment a liitle behind hence being in the past tense…

So the wildlife pond is now finished ….

So how did I get to this point?

Firstly I needed to choose the site for the pond… I chose a spot on the right-hand side of the garden just behind the new beech hedge. Next was the shape, for this I just looped some string on the grass and moved the edges around until I found a shape that I liked.

I used an edging tool and cut around the shape of the string and then removed the turf. Looking back I think the turf removal was harder than digging the pond itself!!

Then I started to dig the hole. I did this over two half days with a little tweaking in the evenings after work.. The garden is on a slight slope so I had to build the back end of the pond. I placed a steak in the middle of the pond and from this I extended a long piece of baton out to the edges of the pond. On top of this I placed a level, this enabled me to build all sides of the pond to the same level.

The soil at various depths was very stony. I picked out all of the large stones but the more you picked the more you found. So after removing the largest I covered the inside of the pond with about an inch of sand. The sand was ordered from the local builders merchants at a cost of around £45, this included delivery( for a ton of sand).

I called upon the help of my friend Tom to help me laying the sand, underlay and liner. I’m glad I did as the morning started of with some gusty wind… We had fun holding down the underlay in preparation for the liner. But after some fun and games we had the underlay down and the liner on top ready for some water.
Ebay turned up trumps again for the cheapest place to buy the liner. The seller was also giving away free underlay with all liner so this was a saving of around £50.

I original decided base the pond measurements at around 4metres x 4metres and ordered liner and underlay for this size. This equated to a piece of liner 7metres x 7 meters. This was sufficient for a pond 4m x 4m x 1m deep. The liner cost came in at around £85 including delivery with the above mention free underlay worth £50.

We slowly filled the pond with water moving the liner around as needed.. After the pond was filled and left to settle for a whole we dug a trench all the way around the perimeter at about a spades width and tucked the liner into the trench. As this is As Cheap As Possible project I opted to bring the soil back up to the edge of the liner and seed all of the bare soil around the pond.

The pond ended up being around 3.5m x 3m and around 500mm deep… There will be no fish in this pond… it is purely for wildlife only so it didn’t need to be too deep but has nice easy sloping sides. I have also built a nice shallow cobbled / pebbled area at the front of the pond to enable none pond wildlife to have a drink. As you can see from the photographs although not quite wildlife our cat decided to christen the pond with the first tongue..

We visited the the local world of water centre and brought some marginal plants and importantly some oxygenating plants for the deeper part of the pond. The cobbles and the pebbles came from the local garden centre at a cost of around £20. I will list the pond plants and cost in my next blog entry as I intend to plant some grasses around edge of the pond so will include those details.

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The First of the Trees Arrive

23/03/2009 by nigel.

So the beech and silver birch trees arrive… Its been raining and the ground is soggy and sticky but I need to get out there and plant them as they have been in transit for a couple of days and I need to get the roots back into the ground.. So home from work… a quick cuppa and off we go..

An couple of hours later and the beech hedge is in along with the silver birch.

As the plan is to create an enclose secluded wildlife area the the sides and the end of the garden needed hedges too. So for the end of the garden I decided on a willow hedge this comprised of 20 plants 4-5 ft tall and for the sides a wildlife mix that consisted of privet, willow, dogrose,maple and walnut, these were all around 3-4ft tall and totalled to 33 plants.
I ordered these and again I then had a couple of days rain or shine to get out the back and dig the trenches..

A couple of days later the plants arrived… Some hours later and all of the plants were in..

Ok it looks like a lot of twigs at the moment but a couple of years down the line and hopefully the desired effect should be achieved.

The running total cost so far is £182.83 including postage costs and some hard graft..

Next ACAP Phase two.. A Wildlife Pond..

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Some More Pics

18/03/2009 by nigel.

I have been looking back through the feeder history and picked out a few more pictures of other visitors to the feeder..

Long Tailed Tit

This is a strange looking furry bird!!

Starling in Vertical Flight…..

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Frog

17/03/2009 by nigel.

The frogs have been quite active in the pond of late.. there is now quite a bit of Frog spawn around the edge of the pond..

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Goldcrest

17/03/2009 by nigel.

This was a first for me… I had never seen a Goldcrest until this one visited the feeder..

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