Are you learning more about the wildlife in your garden at the moment? The AWT have camera traps and bat detectors to loan out for anyone wanting to delve into the secret world of some of the species we might usually miss.
The bat detectors are hand held, and you use a dial to listen out for bats at different frequencies. Different species of bats call at different frequencies, too high for humans to hear. The detectors change the frequency of the calls, making them audible to us. They will help give you a better idea of which bats are using your garden and what for – they make slightly different calls when they’re feeding on insects (known as a feeding buzz) compared to social calls.
The camera traps to reassure readers aren’t actually traps at all and don’t affect the wildlife they ‘capture’! They are small cameras which are triggered to record footage when something moves in their line of sight. We have tested them at St Anne’s school and a couple of home gardens and have got some wonderful footage of hedgehogs, garden birds and rabbits. We will include some instructions but the cameras can take a couple of goes to get used to, especially if it’s a breezy day.
If you’re on social media we will share some of our favourite videos on there of the garden wildlife we have seen.
To help encourage nature into your patch here are a couple of things to consider, you can do some of them even with a tiny garden or balcony. Leave water out, even a small saucer can be helpful for thirsty migrant birds or resident species in need of a drink or bath. Stop mowing! Even just leaving your lawn a few weeks will give flowers a chance, if you can go a month or more even better. Most of us would agree a few studs of colour from dandelions, daisies and more is more interesting than a monotonous square of a single green. Quit the chemicals – there are loads of natural ways to get rid of pests in your garden and you won’t be harming other creatures like hedgehogs in the process. And finally, refuse any compost that isn’t certified peat-free. Peat extraction destroys habitats in the UK and further afield, releases carbon and its use hasn’t even been proven to help plants grow better.
We hope you enjoy getting to know the wildlife on your doorstep – don’t forget to let us know what you have seen and if you are interested in borrowing a camera trap or bat detector let us know – admin@alderneywildlife.org
Just in time for Easter the gannet’s egg was noticed by the AWT as we conducted our monitoring work in the two hour exercise slot. There will still be pairs which have not yet laid, but lots will now be sitting on their egg (gannets only lay one per season). These will be incubated for just over 40 days, meaning the first chicks should be appearing at the very end of May.