Happy New Year and welcome to our new blog series which we hope will inspire you to act for wildlife throughout 2024. There will be a range of topics with ideas for ‘just one thing’ we can all do to help wildlife for that month. So, let’s kick off 2024 by looking at some of the visible, and not so visible, winter wildlife in our local green spaces.  

The UK is an attractive winter destination for birds escaping the freezing conditions in northern countries like Scandinavia and Russia. Numbers of starling and blackbird increase, boosted by northern cousins, while flocks of redwing and fieldfare feast on berry bearing shrubs until they can return ‘home’ in spring. If you feed birds over winter, you might even be lucky enough to see a black cap! This summer visitor would usually migrate to the continent, but warmer winters and plentiful bird feeders have tempted some to save energy and stay in the UK. 

What can we do to help birds in winter? 

• Remember to keep bird feeders clean and provide fresh water, especially if bird baths or ponds have frozen over.
• Plant a small tree or a shrub which has winter berries.
• Build or buy a nest box and put in in place ready for the spring.
• Leave ‘wild’ areas for birds to forage for insects.

There might be a lot of bird activity catching our attention, but snoozing quietly amongst seed heads, under leaf litter, in log piles and hollow stems, some of our most important wildlife is waiting for spring - insects! Many of these gardener’s friends rely on safe places to overwinter. Tiny nooks and crannies are vitally important features but are sometimes dismissed as ‘untidy’. Ladybirds are superb aphid munchers, but in the winter need to find safety and shelter within seed heads or in dry stems. Other beetles, like the devil's coach horse, overwinter under leaf litter as larvae, while some butterfly (meadow brown) and moth larvae (common wainscot) hunker down at the bases of long grass.  

What can we do to help over-wintering insects? 

• Don’t ‘tidy’ your flower beds until the spring. Leaf litter, hollow stems and seed heads are vital winter homes for insects. They are also protein snacks for foraging birds. 

• Prevent ponds from freezing over by putting a float on the surface (perhaps a rubber duck).

• Plan to make a home for solitary bees or a nest for bumblebees. 

• Build a log pile to provide shelter. 

• Pledge not to use pesticides! A ‘pest’ to us is food for wildlife, plus insects and other invertebrates are vital for a healthy garden.

This is just a small selection of wildlife we can help through the winter. We hope you are inspired to do ‘just one thing’ (if not several things) to help them survive and thrive. 

We will be back next month with another blog with 'one thing' you can do for wildlife in February.