17/03/2009 by nigel.

I am embarking on a project to make the garden more wildlife friendly and to be honest look a lot nicer.. At the moment the garden is pretty bare with only a few shrubs and small bushes.

Recently some of our neighbours cut there hedges right back and removed some trees from the gardens, this has appeared to have an impact on the amount of birds visiting the feeders in the garden. So this was one of the motivations to overhaul the garden..

Because of the current financial climate in the UK I decided I would try and do this as cheap as I possibly could and post my findings on this blog to help others make there own wildlife gardens for minimal cost. I have decided to call it my “As Cheap As Project” ACAP for short.

Now I’m no experienced gardener so this is going to be a learning curve for me. So armed with some gardening books and some advice from a few green fingered friends I am kicking off the ACAP with a wildlife section to the garden.
The garden is approximately 80ft in length from the patio and about 32ft wide.
So after a chat with the wife we decided that the bottom third of the garden would become the wild
section.. I would separate this from the rest of the garden with a hedge, leaving a gap in the middle for access. The perimeter of the rest of the section comprises of fence panels and a brick wall, so we decide to hedging all the way round. The hope is that after x amount of years this will turn into a little secluded wildlife haven.

So with an idea for phase one on paper the ACAP begins.

I started by looking at garden centres for shrubs, trees, hedging but these were very expensive. So I turned to the web which ended up at ebay. Ok next where do I start, what plants do I want? So a quick Google on UK wildlife friendly plants gave me an idea of what I wanted. As it was I didn’t even need to do this as an ebay search on wildlife hedging revealed sellers that sold exactly that, a mix of countryside wildlife friendly hedging at a very good price compared with garden centres.

So the first hedge to plant would be the dividing hedge, for this we decided to use beech. The reason we chose this is that it gives pretty much a full time barrier in that the leaves are green in the spring summer and in the autumn winter the leaves turn brown but don’t fall off the tree until the new green ones are about to appear.

So into ebay.. a quick search for Beech .. I purchased 30 4-5ft beech trees for just over £50.00.
These were set to arrive in the next couple of days so I had to get out to the garden and prepare a trench ready for planting. I also came across 3x 8ft silver birch trees for £28.00 including postage so I purchased these too.

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26/11/2008 by nigel.

The feeder has been up for just over a week now. The Starlings took to straight away but it has taken a little time for the Tits to start using it.
Below are a couple of pictures of Blue and great Tits on the feeder. I will upload some video footage soon.

Blue Tit

Blue Tit

Great Tit

Great Tit

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26/11/2008 by nigel.

The Pond cam has now totally de-misted and I have moved the cam to a small clearing in the pond. There are some very good daytime and night time pictures and footage from the cam.
Here are some of the pictures. I am uploading some video as I type, I will link to this from the videos page.

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23/11/2008 by nigel.

Yesterday whilst carrying out some maintenance on the cams and feeds the Fox cam became faulty. The wires literally fell out of the back of the cam.
Until I repair or can get a new Fox Cam I have lashed together and old IR cam and placed it in a less exposed area from the elements.
The view from the cam is at a higher angle and looks down on the feeding area.

I think this may be a little too high.. Any comments? Drop me a mail.

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23/11/2008 by nigel.

The Pond can is now under test. Initially the lens cover has misted over due to the temperature difference between the inside electronics of the cam and the temperature of the water. It is slowly starting to demist, I’m hoping that over the next couple of days that this will disappear all together otherwise I will have to remove the cam and look into some ways of preventing the misting.
The cam is not in its final resting place yet. Once the cam has demisted I will clear an area in the pond and fix it in place.

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18/11/2008 by nigel.

I have added a few more videos to the website as well as a few other text changes. I have received an email telling me that the changes can’t be seen.

If this is the case please right mouse click on the page and click reload or refresh depending on which browser you are using.

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18/11/2008 by nigel.

Two new feeds have now gone live..

I have installed a new bigger bird box and cam in readiness for the spring.

Last year the Tits showed an interest in the box but I think it was a little too small..

Also installed is a new addition, a Bird Feeder fitted with a cam.

The first visitor to the feeder was a starling.

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12/11/2008 by nigel.

The end of 2008 is near so I thought it was about time I posted to the blog as I have been a bit slack in this area due to work commitments.
Ok enough of the excuses….
We have had a few regular additions to the garden of late, two squirrels, a jay and as well as the usual foxes we have a new fox that we have named Stumpy. The reason for this can be seen from the pictures…. Half his tail is missing.

One of the Squirrels…

And last but not least the Jay..

In the near future I will be reactivating the bird box cam, adding a new feeder cam and a pond cam.

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12/11/2008 by nigel.

I have had a few emails making me aware that the cams are sometimes down.
I have rectified this by turning windows automatic updates to manual install rather than automatic install.
The machine was rebooting in the early hours every time an update was downloaded and installed.

If anyone still has problems accessing the cams please drop me a mail.

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01/05/2008 by nigel.

Over the past few weeks we have had a vixen fox coming in a couple of times a night for food. The size of her teats and they way that she gathers food and takes it away with her would suggest that she has cubs somewhere.
We noticed recently that a dog fox had also started turning up. And then a couple of nights ago both the dog and the vixen arrived together to feed.

We also saw one bolshie hedgehog decide that he / she was going to have some food regardless of any fox…
He gave the fox a bit of a nudge as it would do to one of it’s own for food. The fox give’s the WHATEVER! look and they then share from the bowl.

The video’s for both of these events can be seen on the video pages..

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