What's in your Patch?

So now we are at the height of summer, the children are off school, holidays are being taken (we are off to the New Forest - yay!) and come rain or shine you and your family will need entertaining. So now is a perfect time to explore the area around your house, street or town and discover your ‘patch'. This can be as small or as large as you want to make it (but please don't trespass).

Did you see Halcyon River Diaries on BBC1 earlier this year? It followed Charlie Hamilton-James and his family as they recorded the wildlife in their ‘patch', an amazing area around their home, with some spectacular results. When we first moved into our house, some 25 years ago, our ‘patch' was just the back garden. We enjoyed the birds there and the occasional hedgehog, but then one day everything changed when we had a yellowhammer in the front garden! A yellowhammer, so very obviously lost, but as we weren't too far away from farmland where they were then abundant (but sadly no more) he was only a little lost. But a yellowhammer! Just this one new bird started the extension of our ‘patch' as we wanted to investigate what else was around.

Over the years our patch has become much larger and we have noticed numerous changes. Fifteen years ago if we wanted to see goldfinches we headed half a mile up the road and down into the country lanes, but now we see them regularly in our garden. Five years ago greenfinches were regular visitors here but now we have to venture to our local country park to even glimpse them. Removal of some particularly horrible leylandi at the edge of our garden brought the redwings in during the winter but sadly the building of a new fence has meant no hedgehogs in the back garden any more (something that I hope will be rectified by the time you read this). Strangely the introduction of a greenhouse brought in a frog (or possibly two).

Wildlife watching in your patch will help you follow the seasons more closely. We watch trees changing and snowdrops blooming. Every April we head to the higher farmland behind our house to see if the wheatears are back and watch carefully to see if our bird box is going to have a new family. We scan the sky in May to see if the swifts, housemartins and swallows have returned and this is often when we start to hear foxes calling. We take a walk along the river in June to look for grey wagtails (which also come to the tiny stream across from our house) and dippers. In July most wildlife seems to disappear but they have just become quieter. Many birds go into a moult at this time and need to stay hidden for their own safety. October will see us heading to the country park to check the lake there for returning winter ducks and towards the end of the year we hope for brambling and siskins in the garden.

Over the last 25 years we have had an amazing 47 species of bird, in our garden or directly over our house (the highlight over the house being a red kite). We have had frogs, mice in the shed, a fox at the end of the drive, the occasional grey squirrel in the cherry tree and in the evenings numerous bats flying around the same tree. There have been a variety of butterflies, lots of moths, many types of bee and, of course, quite a few hedgehogs. In our street we have had a few badgers, more foxes and some tawny owls. The farmland behind must hold many other animals and at least ten other species of bird that do not venture into our street. A little further up the valley (less than three miles) we know there are deer, goshawks, crossbills, probably redpolls, and the river has otters.

We are lucky that we live in a semi-rural area but wildlife is everywhere and your patch will nearly always have much more than you realise. So while the weather is hopefully good, get out and explore your local area, then go back in a few weeks and look again and you will see changes. Go back in a few months and it will all be very different again and you will probably see new things - be it different birds, new plants or a different insect. What's guaranteed is that the world around us changes and it's amazing to watch. You can do this on your own or as a family and it's normally free.

Children can pick a Wild Square through the RSPB and make that their patch to watch or check out The Woodland Trust's Nature Detective site.

If you want to start small, with just your garden, there are many online guides to help you identify what you are looking at. Most of them link from this website: www.naturalengland.org.uk/advice/wildlifeguide/default.aspx

So when you are looking for something to do, do some looking!

Have fun!

Fiona Sharp

photos (c) Steph Comley 2010