My twenty year old daughter has never seen a hedgehog. I’m saddened and shocked by this because hedgehogs have vanished from our lives on my watch. When I was her age, I’d regularly see and hear them snuffling around for food at night. They have become rarities in less than a generation!
The RSPB’s survey of garden wildlife focused on eight species likely to appear in the nation’s gardens. What it revealed was the continuing decline in sightings of some of our most familiar and favourite garden wildlife.
We already know from a variety of different reports how important gardens are for birds, bugs, plants and other creatures, but this survey has heightened the important role gardens now play in supporting nature.
The RSPB is calling on people to take up our Wild Challenge this summer. It will help you discover what shares your outdoor space and offers ideas on how you can best support it.
So, what about those findings. It’s a mixed bag of results, but essentially, the national headline is that hedgehog sightings are down, foxes are the most commonly reported wild garden visitors, and we also see grass snakes, moles, slow worms, stag beetles, stoats and great crested newts.
What you see depends on where you live.
The Isle of Wight’s top three most commonly seen species in order are fox, slow worm and mole.
In Berkshire it’s fox, hedgehog and stag beetle.
Greater London’s gardens are dominated by foxes, followed by stag beetles and then hedgehogs.
East Sussex has fox, slow worm and mole.
West Sussex differs in having fox, hedgehog and slow worm.
Surrey gardens recorded fox, stag beetle and hedgehog.
Kent mirrors West Sussex with fox, hedgehog and slow worm.
Other interesting statistics include: a quarter (26%) of East Sussex gardens are visited by grass snakes; the Isle of Wight has more garden stoats (16%) than any other area of the south east of England, and Greater London has more great crested newts (4%) than it has stoats(1%).
Comparing sightings with reports from 2016 shows fox populations are relatively stable, but hedgehogs are down 6% across the south east. Our population of grass snakes returned the largest population drop of 11%, while numbers of slow worms fell 7%. Sightings of stoats rose 9%.
While the findings may dismay many, it is not yet too late to act. Our Wild Challenge webpages have a wealth of suggestions from creating ponds, adding a nestbox to a suitable wall or simply letting grass grow long and go to seed. If everyone in the South East England sowed a single square metre of wildflowers, we’d collectively create a wildlife rich meadow more than three and a half times larger than London’s square mile!