BIRDS,MOTELS & HOTELS

As you have probably noticed I have not been to active again, this is because there always seems to be plenty of other jobs in hand at the moment.
Anyway have had a couple of short trips up to Stithians res over the last two weeks, and did manage a few images a few of which I have put on today,sad to say nothing rare but just ordinary species.
So the birds will be part one of this post, and the second part will be of something I have had in mind since the spring, so read on.

CHIFFCHAFF.

BLACK-HEADED GULL.

LONG-TAILED TIT.

Ok so now here is the second part of the post, as you know I do love doing macro shots of insects during the summer months, and everything we see and read tells us how they are all suffering from loss of habitat and declining rapidly.

So I decided I would try to do my little bit to help, this year I have put more insect friendly plants into the garden and have stopped doing any form of pest control which could harm them.

Then I decided I wanted to try and give them places to hibernate during the winter, so after a lot of research about the best ways to do this I came up with the two ideas below.

The first was a simple structure which I call a Bug Motel that is very basic, its just a metre of garden mesh formed into a circle and held with cable ties.

Twigs are pushed through the bottom to keep it off the ground, it is then filled with dry leaves and a large plant saucer placed on top to help keep it dry.

BUG MOTEL.

Next I decided I would try something a little more elaborate, so decided to build a Bug Hotel. Having looked at many commercial ones on the market I decided to build my own.

For this I obtained a large wooden pallet and took it apart, this took some time as the wire nails they use really hold the thing together and are quite hard to pull out.

I finally ended up with the structure below which I hope will attract Ladybirds, Solitary bees, Lacewings among other things.

The part at the top with slit openings was to be for butterflies, but after extensive reading from many scorches there is no evidence that butterflies use these, so have filled it with twigs,leaves and a hanging basket liner shredded up so there is more room for more insects.

So that's the latest project and it will be interesting to see what happens, so I hope this will perhaps inspire one or two of you to have a go, after all it cannot do any harm only good.

If you do please post me and let me know how you get on.

BUG HOTEL.

BUG HOTEL.