Lee Brady's Recording Blog

Pond Creation Toolkit

Launched on Wednesday 1st June 2011, this new version of the Pond Creation Toolkit contains many additional and updated factsheets, and now 101 plant and animal species are included on the BAP Species Map!

via www.pondconservation.org.uk

Some very useful information here! I recommend you visit the Pond Conservation website and download one of the fact sheets for yourselves. The information on creating ponds for common toads, great crested newts and grass snakes is especially useful ;-)

 

Churchill's Butterfly House Recreated at Chartwell

A butterfly house set up by Sir Winston Churchill at his family home in Kent has been recreated by the National Trust.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Pity we missed this when the family visited Chartwell last week. 

Do You Have a Dragon Garden?

 

   

Kent Wildlife Trust's Wild About Gardens 2010 award is currently open for applications but you'll have to be quick.  The closing date for applications is June 30th so you wil have to be quick.

This annual award now has a 'Best Dragon Garden' award, sponsored by KRAG, for the best amphibian and/or reptile garden in Kent.  So if you have been nurturing parts of your garden to make them suitable for amphibians and reptiles why not visit the Wild About Gardening page on the Kent Wildlife Trust website and enter. 

The Dragon Gardens are Coming...

 

 

Dragon Garden Wins Bronze

The first public event attended by the newly formed Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust was at this week's Hampton Court Flower Show. ARCT volunteers helped to build a garden specifically designed to encourage reptiles and amphibians. Congrats to all for winning a Bronze Medal. 

The garden can be seen on the Hampton Court website. 

I must admit though, the garden strikes me as having a lot of path and very short grass. I know, I know, things have to grow. But what on earth were they were thinking when they built that rockery! Hi-rise slow-worms, who would have thought it?!

Gardening for Wildlife

One of the great joys of owning a garden is being able to manage it just the way you like. As a keen herpetologist, that presents a fantastic opportunity. We have lived at our Dunkirk address for nearly 10 years and some of the gardening work that has been undertaken over that time is really starting to pay dividends. 

 Although our garden pond is only small (for the moment!), it supports good numbers of common frog and smooth newts. Indeed, earlier this year the kids had a fantastic afternoon newting and pulled out 56 individual newts! 

Last week I spotted something moving on the grass and ran in the house shouting for everybody to come and see...  

An adult female stag beetle (Lucanus cervus)! This is the first stag beetle we have seen in the garden. We have constructed several log piles, but I'm not sure whether they breed. It is likely that this one simply flew in. Stag beetles have apparently been recorded in Faversham and we live close to Blean Woods. More information on stag beetles is available from the Stag Beetle Helpline (including a recording form of course).  

The family weren't quite as excited as me, but I suspect Erin was secretly thrilled.

Another interesting find over the past weekend was a spotted longhorn beetle (Rutpela maculata). I found this one feeding on the flowers of an oxe-eye daisy. 

The garden does of course support lots of slow-worms, but I'll write about them in a future post - stay tuned, the Dragon Gardens are coming!