My Wildlife Garden
Whilst house-hunting in Brittany last summer, two things high on the priority list were – no, not super duper bathrooms, or a fancy kitchen – but a pond and some woodland! We short-listed three properties with ponds (found on the internet) to look at, and the second property fitted the bill perfectly (the house isn’t bad either!).
We are now the proud owners of a hectare of land, which includes a small orchard with stream running beside it, a large veggie patch, lawns, ornamental trees, yet more fruit trees, a woodland area and…… a lake! About 2,500m2 of stream-fed natural lake, full of perch and carp, and complete with resident moorhens.
A lot of time in our kitchen is spent with binoculars, looking out through the window at the lake. We’ve had visits from herons, kingfishers, mallards, coypu and water voles. The moorhens had four youngsters when we arrived, but the young grew up over the winter period and have now left. Mr and Mrs Moorhen have spent their time this spring building nests – they seem to be very fussy, as only now in July is Mrs Moorhen sitting on the third nest, so we await impatiently the time when baby moorhens will be swimming around the lake.
Given the presence of running water, I was surprised to spot frogspawn and then tadpoles. Now, later in the year, we can hear the frogs croaking, and on walking around the pond we always hear the familiar “splot” of a frog jumping startled into the water.
One day whilst walking in the woods I spotted something unusual. On closer inspection it turned out to be two Mandarin ducks sitting on a fallen tree trunk. They have been back several times and look magnificent swimming on the water.
We are avid birdwatchers and keep a list of birds spotted in the garden. We’re up to about 40 now. In the winter we had visits from a female pheasant and a red-legged partridge. I tried to tell them they could take refuge in our garden away from the hunters but they obviously didn’t understand my French!
Birds are nesting all over our property. In our semi-open wood store, a blackbird made her nest on top of a pile of cut branches. Every time we went in there for logs or kindling, we had to make some noises and “talk” to her so as not to startle her! She sat there watching us with beady eyes, but she knew we were not foe. In the other wood shed, a wren took up residence and built her nest. This shed is attached to the chicken shed, and there is just chicken wire between the two. She’d fly through the chicken wire and go out of the pop hole of the chicken shed. When the babies fledged there was a shed full of them – so cute and tiny, and we were lucky to have the opportunity to observe them really close up.
Then there were the pied wagtails who were determined to build a nest on top of our chimney. This really wasn’t on, as it was April and we needed our fire lit! Eventually they got the hint and went away, but are now back with their young so I guess they nested close by.
A few months ago we bought an inflatable dinghy to see the lake from a duck’s viewpoint! It was great floating about on the water, really relaxing. The last few weeks we haven’t used it, as we didn’t want to disturb the nesting moorhens, but after some recent rain we lifted it up to tip out the rainwater. Imagine our surprise to see a collared grass snake under it! We were able to observe this beautiful creature at quite close quarters. They are harmless and we just put the boat back and it slithered back to its new home.
Our wildlife menagerie was recently made complete when we finally spotted a red squirrel in the garden, bounding around on the ground and up the trees.
Life is not just about the wildlife – we are trying to be self-sufficient (ish) here. We have a large veggie patch, much loved by the swallows who delight in swooping down over it and perching on the fence. Then there are the hens who provide us with fresh free-range eggs every day. And all the undesirable “wildlife” (root-eating grubs etc.) from the veg patch are eagerly gobbled up by the girls, who in turn not only produce eggs, but also plenty of waste material to add to the compost heap.
It’s all a far cry from our old life in London!
By Mandy Allen
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