2012 has started with a buzz literally as we have had a few reports of bees being seen already as well as butterflies. Despite the stormy conditions experienced across much of the UK, it seems the relatively mild winter so far for parts of the UK is disrupting the natural world. Have you seen any creatures out in winter so far that should really be tucked up hibernating, let us know if so!
We are gearing up for the Big Garden Birdwatch coming at the end of the month (28-29 January 2012) as this event is a really busy one for us as we deal with many of the queries generated from the survey. If you need help or want to find out how to take part have a look at the Big Garden Birdwatch pages on our website linked below.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/index.aspx
Many people are noticing birds starting to strip berries from various trees and shrubs now, this is a really important source of food for wild birds through the autumn and winter. It also highlights the importance of not cutting berry bearing hedgerow shrubs until the end of winter allowing various birds like song thrush, redwing and fieldfare access to this source of food. Most hedges will be cleared of berries over the next month or two allowing for them to be cut before the nesting season gets under way again in March.
It seems that santa has been very wildlife friendly this year with lots of people receiving feeding stations and nesting boxes for Christmas, we are getting lots of queries about where to put them and how to get the best from them, have a look here and here for advice about these top actions for helping garden birds.
The wildlife teams top tip to help garden wildlife this January is to create bundles of twigs from any hedge or tree cutting and place them amongst the vegetation in the border, creating places for invertebrates to thrive and also for birds like wrens to forage.