Helping kids to save the world through Gardening

Gardening with children will almost invariably instill in them a love for nature and a desire to protect the natural world. They will also have a greater understanding of where their food comes from and what it means to eat seasonally. Even if you don't have a big garden - in fact even if you don't have a garden at all - you can still do gardening with children.  Here's 15 ideas to get you started:

 15 great ways to get gardening with kids

A Seal in the River Liffey, Dublin

I am just back from a family holiday in Ireland.  When there, we has a day trip to Dublin, taking the train along the coast from further south.  We had read that you can see seals here so kept our eyes peeled all the way there in the hope of seeing one ... without luck.  I have never seen a wild seal.  Oh well, maybe another time.

In Dublin we walked down to the dock area where we took a moment alongside the River Liffey to decide what to do next.  At the same moment we all turned to look at the river and what did we see - a SEAL!!  It was just chilling in the middle of the river, without a care in the world.  I found this video from The Irish Times from 2 years ago when a seal was filmed in the Liffey at the same place as we were so apparently our sighting was not a first, although I do not know if the seal we saw was the same one.  We watched it for a while and it was obviously looking for fish, diving for up to 10 minutes at a time before resurfacing.

The article in The Irish Times asks whether the seal will become the Dublin equivalent of Fungi the Dolphin.  Fungi is a wild bottlenose dolphin who happily lives in Dingle Harbour, Kerry, on the West coast of Ireland.  When we were there in 2000 we specifically went to see if we could see him but without any luck.  

Seeing this seal was just as good though and such a surprise as we knew nothing about seals in the Liffey.  It also proves that the water is not too polluted which is great news for a city river.

Have you ever seen any wildlife in an unexpected place?

Seal in the River Liffey, Dublin.  Image from The Irish Times

 

Animal Tales - 105

Welcome to Animal Tales, the monthly linky for all your animal stories.  If you have an animal related blog post (old or new) then come and link up!

One of my posts this week is about seeing wildlife in an unexpected place - you can read about it here.

Image from The Irish Times

Saving the Iberian Lynx one salt pot at a time

Last week these pots of salt caught my eye for all the right reasons - they are made from cardboard and have a cork lid, not the usual plastic one.  The salt I normally buy comes in a plastic pot but this will be my salt of choice from now on, not just because of the lack of plastic (which in itself is a positive step forwards) but because the cork lids helps to preserve one of the rarest of our big cats - the Iberian Lynx.

Weekly Green Tips #37 - Plants to feed the birds

Week 36 - Bird attracting plants

With large areas of the countryside put over to agriculture with the associated loss of natural habitats and use of pesticides to kill off insects, our gardens are now more important than ever as reserves for wild birds.  Growing plants that feed the birds can really help maintain and build populations.

Weekly Green Tips #35 - Avoiding palm oil

Week 35 - How to avoid palm oil in food

Palm oil is something you won't find on the supermarket oils aisle but once you start looking at ingredients lists in foods you'll see it is is so many products.  Palm oil is grown in tropical regions on land that has been cleared of rain forest to then grow the palm plantations.  The forests are home to thousands of animal and plant species, the most notable in Asia being the Orang-outang whose population numbers are now plummeting.  Clearance of the rain forests also contributes to climate change through increased CO₂ levels and many palm oil workers are paid incredibly low wages and work in hazardous conditions without adequate protection.  

This is a subject I will be returning to over the coming months.  If you now feel you want to reduce or stop eating products containing palm oil here are 7 ways to go about that.

Bees in the Polytunnel - Part 2

Last week I found my polytunnel full of about 300 bees and had no idea why they were there.  It was a mystery but now I do have a little more information.

I posted questions about the bees on Twitter and a Downsizer, a forum I am on.  Several bee keepers came back to me and 2 thought that the bees may well have been attracted to the warmth which makes sense as we were having lovely sunny weather at the time with daytime temperatures in the tunnel in the mid twenties.  They also thought they might be coming in to feed on the honeydew produced by aphids - but there are no aphids in there.  A third thought was they were coming to drink the condensation on the plastic but again this did not seem likely as none were drinking, just bashing into the plastic.  In fact the only thing I saw a few of them do (other than fly into the plastic) was to feed on the French Marigolds I have on there.

I then received some ideas about the species and I now believe the bees to be Ivy Bees.  This species was only identified as a separate species - Colletes hederae in 1993 and has been in the UK since 2001 (longer in France).  It is a mining bee that lives in the soil as a solitary bee but there may often be many hundreds or thousands of them in the same place.  They are on the wing between September and mid November when their main food source IVY is in flower, hence their name.

Male Ivy Bee By Charlesjsharp (Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Bees in the Polytunnel - Part 1

I know with Halloween approaching "Bats in the Belfry" might be a more topical post title but to be honest, I don't have a belfry, although I did see a couple of bats when I went to collect older boy from athletics last night ... and one was huge!  But I digress as this is a post about weird goings on in the polytunnel at Eco-Gites of Lenault.

Litter and Wildlife - It is our responsibility

I recently tweeted this picture:

... and it got a lot of retweets and comments.  A couple of people tweeted, quite rightly, that they would never throw litter so they could not be responsible for the plight if this poor bird.  I have no doubt they that they do never chuck plastic bags into the wider environment - or any litter for that matter - but that slightly missed my point.  My point is that we all use plastic but we actually do not have a lot of control over what happens to it once we stop using it.

Weekly Green Tips #26 - 7 ways to attract birds to your garden

Week 26 - Attracting birds to your garden

Gardens, especially small urban ones, are an incredibly useful habitat for birds and if you provide the right features you will be surprised how many birds you can attract.  Here are my 7 tips for attracting birds to your garden.

Bees, Brexit and what you can do to help them

I blogged recently about some of the benefits that the UK environment has experienced under EU membership but there was one noticeable absence from the list - bees.  Bees are responsible for pollinating a large amount of the food crops that find their ways to our plates and whilst experts may argue over exactly how much, in a world which is struggling to feed large amounts of its people, I think it is fair to say we would be better off with bees than without them.  In the UK there are over 250 species of bee but since 1900, 20 species have been lost and a further 35 are endangered.

Image from Pixabay

Brexit and the UK Environment

One of the arguments for voting Leave in the EU referendum was that EU bureaucrats exerted too much control on the UK, forcing member states to accept too many regulation that maybe they would better without.  Too much red tape.  Too many stupid rules.  In some cases, yes, this may have been true but when it comes to the environment the EU has been instrumental in getting some pretty good cross-European policies adopted.  Let me give you a few examples

What has the EU ever done for the UK Environment?

Wildlife

Natural species do not understand man-made boundaries and therefore having environmental policies that stretch across Europe has helped to protect vulnerable species.  High environmental standards and a legal framework across Europe together with EU funding has protected many species in the UK; the bittern is a good example.  This large but secretive bird was on the brink of extinction in the UK due to loss of its habitat - reed beds.  Funding from the EU via the EU Birds and Habitats Directives enabled reed beds to be re-established and now the bittern population is rising.  And not only has the bittern benefited - other reed bed species are now thriving and this in itself encourages green tourism that helps the local economy.

Bittern - Image from Flickr

How the foxglove got its name

Well the long and the short of it is, no-one knows!  There is a child's story that tells how a wily fox placed the bells of a foxglove flower on his pads like gloves so he could sneak up on his chicken prey silently.  But this is simply that, a fairy tail born from the name foxglove rather than being the reason it was thus named.  And apparently no etymologist has managed to find why the Anglo-Saxon's first named this plant, foxglove but it would appear that Christina Rossetti knew it was all just a story.

The Peacock

The peacock has a score of eyes,
  With which he cannot see;
The cod-fish has a silent sound,
  However that may be;

No dandelions tell the time,
  Although they turn to clocks;
Cat's-cradle does not hold the cat,
  Nor foxglove fit the fox.

Image by Kelly Louise Judd

Weekly Green Tips - 7 Best bee attracting plants

Week 13 - 7 Best bee attracting plants

We need bees.  It is not just honey that bees give us.  As I mentioned in my Weekly Green Tips last week (7 beneficial garden bugs) bees pollinate over 30% of all our food stuffs and without them the future on mankind is believed to be at risk.  As guardians of the open spaces we call gardeners, we therefore owe it to everyone to do our bit to help bee populations by planting a variety of plants they can feed from.

Bees can fly in cooler temperatures than other insects as they are able to generate their own body heat in some way, rather than having to rely on the warmth of the sun to get going.  They can therefore be on the wing from early spring to late autumn so we need be growing plants that provide them food throughout the year.  There are also different species of bees and their tongue length varies so growing different flowering plants to cater for both long and short-tongued species is important.

Generally bees prefer single native flowers rather than complex or non native ones flowers but they also adore wild flowers and weeds so leaving some wild areas in your garden in great for bees.

If you are thinking about growing plants that will best help bees the following list will serve our flying friends well - it offers food plans all through the year and caters for different species.

2 bees feeding on  a passion flower

Weekly Green Tips - 7 Beneficial Garden Bugs

Week 12 - 7 Beneficial Garden Bugs

It can be all too easy when out in the garden to squish every bug that passes your way, assuming it ill be damaging to your imminent harvest.  Now admittedly there are a lot of bad beasties out there who want nothing more than to eat your harvest before you do but WAIT- before you squash everyone you need to know which are the good guys, the bugs and beasts that actually HELP get that harvest from garden to plate.

Don't feed the ducks bread - feed them ....

Heading off to the park and feeding the dusks is a much favoured activity for young children (and some older ones too) but actually, feeding bread to them is not the ideal choice.  The bread quickly breaks down in the water so a lot sinks to the bottom uneaten and can cause problems in the water including algal blooms (where the water can in effect, become poisonous) and increases the risk of avian flu spreading.  Also, any uneaten bread left on the bank attracts vermin such as rats which can carry some rather nasty diseases.

A Goldcrest sighting. France and UK's smallest bird

Last week I was just closing the gate into the veg garden when a small bird flew past me and into the hazel tree next to me.  By it's diminutive size I immediately thought it was a wren, which are very common in Normandy but in fact it was not a wren.  It was an even smaller bird and one I have not knowingly seen in almost 20 years.  It was a Goldcrest.

Goldcrest and it's cousin the Firecrest are the two smallest birds in both France and the UK.  I have never seen a Firecrest but many years ago Simon and I saw a Goldcrest.  We were out walking our then Labrador and a Goldcest flew into a small bush just an arms length away from us and seemed totally unperturbed by our presence.  Unfortunately it was more worried by our lumbering Labrador (she was called Lady but was no delicate creature!) and whilst we had stopped, she saw no reason to and as she trundled past the bush the little bird flew away.

Fast forward nearly 20 years and another Goldcrest settled in a tree, almost close enough to me to touch.  Of course I had no camera to hand and suspect it would have flown off sooner had I tried to reach for one.  So I just held my breath and admired it's tiny beauty for the few seconds it remained there.  

If you have never seen either of these birds (Firecrests are in fact quite rare in the UK) then do have a look at this video from the British Trust for Ornithology

Goldcrest - Image from Wikipedia

Some facts

Goldcrest :- 

Latin name - Regulus regulus

French name - Le roitelet huppé

UK and France distribution - a resident all year throughout

Firecrest :- 

Latin name - Regulus ignicapilla

French name - Roitelet triple-bandeau

UK distribution restricted to the south and often only a summer visitor

France distribution - a resident all year throughout  

The French name Roitelet and the Latin name Regulus both mean little King.  This may refer to their tiny size and the distinctive crest on their heads.  In Greek mythology there was a contest to see which bird could fly the highest and the winner would be given the title, King of the Birds.  It was believed the Eagle would win but as he tired a small bird who was hiding under his tail emerged and flew higher, to win and claim th etitle.  This bird was most likely to have been a Goldcrest or Firecrest. 

Have you ever seen either a Firecrest or a Goldcrest?  I hope I don't have to wait 20 years to see another one.

Mouse and Rat Wars, the natural way.

Regular readers of this blog may remember that last year I waged war on the mice who moved into the polytunnel and ate all the mange-tout out broad beans seeds I had sown in there.  I did manage to resow in pots in mouse proof containers but it was not ideal.  Well once again in it the time to sow these seeds but I am hopeful I have found a solution that will allow me to sow straight into the soil without losses.

Beetroot.  No, not the sort in vinegar or even the roots you might grow but beetroot in the form on dehydrated pellets for animal feed, known better in English as sugar beet pellets.  To explain let me take you back a couple of months ...

Earlier in the year a family (or several in fact) of rats took up residence in the feed shed and under the chicken run.  It is well known that if you have farm animals that sooner or later you are very likely to get rats so we were feeling quite pleased we had remained rat free for so long.  Straight away we put spare feed sacks of food into rat proof containers and we set traps but we avoided poison because of the danger to the cats and Saari.  Rats are canny creatures, though and we only trapped a couple before the others just ignored the traps.  When we had rat proofed the feed we had one bag of pellets too many and after a few days of all other food being out of reach they broke into it.   I was furious.  However, over the next few days were found 4 dead rats and by a week later ALL the rats had gone!  What was going on?

I then had a brainwave and remembered Simon saying that there is a form of rat poison available in the UK that kills rats who eat it dry after which it swells inside them and they die.  I did a bit of research and found a couple of references to sugar beet pellets killing rats the same way because, unlike most other creatures who overeat, rats cannot vomit.  It seems, therefore, that the pellets had killed them and apparently the same fate awaits mice if they eat it.

Fast forward to the polytunnel this week and I have sown broad beans ... and placed a bowl of pellets just next to the rows.  Hopefully the sweet taste of the pellets will be preferable to the beans should any mice think that the polytunnel is their very own restaurant.

I'll let you know how I get on!

And as none of this was at all photogenic I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from plants in our front porch taken rather late in the evening.  So far the tender oranges and chillies are quite happy there  but with temperatures due to plummet by the weekend, I may have to move them indoors soon.

Joining in with Annie's How Does Your Garden Grow linky at Fable and Folk ....

Wildlife of Normandy

One of the many things I love about Normandy is the amount  of wildlife we see.  It makes the horribly early school run a bit more bearable when we see so much wildlife (well, until it gets too dark!) and a walk or trip in the car will always result is something beautiful being seen.   Some animals like rabbits are commonly seen in many places but there is plenty of wildlife here that you might not see elsewhere.

Wildlife of Normandy

Roe Deer

The woods around us are full of roe deer and watching their delicate canter as they head away from a passing car or walker is a such a treat.

In French a roe deer is a chevreuille where as a red deer is a cerf and a fallow deer is a daim.  A female of any species is a biche and a stag is (somewhat confusingly) called a cerf.

Wild Boar

These large wild pigs live in the larger woodland areas but are very shy and in 8 years here I have never seen one.  I have seen their tracks in the mud and the damage they do digging for food but that is it.  One family staying in the gite did see one once though, a male, and said he was very impressive.

The French for wild boar is sanglier and you will often see the meat made into dried sausages (saussisons).

Red Squirrels

These adorable creatures are the resident squirrel of France where there are no grey squirrels to compete against.  Autumn is a great time of year to see them as they are busy gathering nuts to store for the winter.  Unlike other small mammals they rarely hibernate unless we have a prolonged cold spell so they need these hidden supplies to survive.

The French for squirrel is écureuil and whilst most foreigners struggle to say squirrel, most non-French speakers have trouble pronouncing écureuil correctly, myself included.

Stone Martens

The stone marten, also known as a beech marten, is similar to a pine marten but is  a species not found in the UK.  It is common in France although not often seen as it is nocturnal.  It can cause problems for poultry owners and will kill chickens so secure night time sheds are advisable.  It is not unknown also to overwinter in lofts where it can make a lot of noise when it moves around at night!

In French a stone marten is known as a fouine which is reflected in it's Latin name Martes foina.  This is also the name for a weasel in French.

Hares

In the UK hares are becoming increasingly rare and whilst I saw them when I was younger and lived in The Cotswolds I am not sure I ever saw one in Kent.  However, in Normandy they are frequently seen especially if you are around at sunrise (i.e. on the school run!).  They are one of my all time favourite animals (along with hippos which sadly we don't see in France!) and I have a Hare Pinterest board in their honour.

The French for hare is lièvre which presumably is where the English word of leveret, for a young hare, comes from.
 

Toads

Each spring our little pond gets a couple of good dollops of frog spawn in it and as the year progresses the tadpoles grow into froglets.  Not all the froglets are, in fact, frogs and some should actually be called toadlets (if such a word exists).  It is difficult to see the toadspawn as it exists below the surface and in thin strands rather than clumps but it must be there because, as well as the toadlets, we also have a lot of adults toads ... who like nothing more than pretending to be a stone when I go out at dusk to shut the birds in and then move when I am not expecting them too!

I also wanted to include toads in my Normandy wildlife list simply because their name in French is sure to elicit a few sniggers from readers.  The French for toad is crapaud (pronounced crappo!).

Buzzards

I couldn't finish a list of Normandy wildlife without including at least one bird.  I previously wrote a post about why Normandy is good for birdwatching and what rarities you might be lucky to see but buzzards are a bird that you are sure to see every day if you stay at Eco-Gites of Lenault.  They are amazingly common swooping over the landscape or resting on posts and fences.  They are beautiful birds and I never tire of seeing them.  

The French for buzzard is buse pronounced somewhat like booze.

This is just a fraction of all the wildlife you could see when in Normandy.  If you click on the label Wildlife/flowers in the right hand column it will bring up all the posts I have written.

From the list above, I have only yet to see a wild boar and I am hopeful that will happen one day.  Have you seen many of the creatures on list list here in Normandy or have you seen any other species of note?  Do please let me know in a comment.

This post will be linked to the weekly Animal Tales blog linky which opens on Tuesday 22nd September on this blog.  Come and link up your animal blog posts or come back and read lots of lovely animal blog posts.

All images are from Wikipedia and are marked for re-use.

Silent Sunday - August 2nd 2015