Is your lawn looking forlorn?

If your lawn is anything like mine, it probably resembles a desert at the moment, both in its sandy colour and in dryness. I can’t recall such a long, hot dry spell for many years and there is no doubt that it’s starting to make life tough for some of our wildlife. Jack and I discovered a fire here at RSPB The Lodge on Friday due to a discarded cigarette, so be super careful as it is unbelievably dry in places.

Hard ground can make it tough for all sorts of birds and animals to find food so I was pleased to peer out of my upstairs window just before I went to bed last night to see a dark “box” by the bird table that I didn’t remember being there before. Once it moved, I realised it was a big male badger and ended up watching it for 15 minutes or so as it fed on the lawns before going to the pond and having a couple of sips from the rapidly diminishing waters and exiting stage left to the field and sett area adjacent to us.

A dry lawn is still good foraging ground for badgers - this one's in my garden (image cMark Ward)

A double mammal whammy
It glanced up and drew my attention to a rather gangly legged fox cub on the lawn, which was the first I’d ever seen actually in our garden. We have a badger sett and fox earth right next to our garden and although the badgers commute between gardens and the field nightly, foxes have never actually come into the garden before, so perhaps a sign of finding things a bit tough. 

After I’d been “glow-worming” at my local wood last week, I arrived home to find a hedgehog on one of the front lawn areas that’s shared between the three houses in our block. We see the infrequently but it’s another one to keep an eye out for on your lawn.

No, it's not an alien life form - it's a glow-worm doing what it does best (image cMark Ward)

This all got me thinking about how important all the lawns are in the UK. I wonder how much space they cover in total and just how many worms and other creatures are living in lawns? 

Cracking up
Lawns are also really important space for birds. Thrushes and starlings find food in them and green woodpeckers use their super long tongues to probe cracks and crevices for ants. It's really tough for the former two at the moment but with all the cracks opening up, I reckon green woodpeckers will be doing ok at least when it comes to finding food.

Not the world's best shot of a hedgehog but a quick record shot of a sadly much-declined species (image cMark Ward)

It’s a tricky summer in many parts of the UK for making your lawn great for wildlife, but take a look at our advice for making a lawn for wildlife for some ideas - perhaps for when the dry spell is over - and let’s hope we get some rain soon everywhere in the country. We'll be making a meadow area in the autumn, so I'll let you know how that goes! For now, remember to keep your birdbath topped up and put out some extra sources of water for wildlife because it really needs a helping hand.