During the lockdown periods of the pandemic, we have all spent far more time than usual at home and we’ve grown to appreciate the smaller things in life much more such as our gardens and outdoor spaces at home. Admiring the plants flourish and having wildlife flock to your garden every day is a sight to behold out of your kitchen window.
How To Encourage Wildlife into Your Garden
We have come up with a guide for homeowners today on how they can encourage wildlife to come into their gardens.
Leave Out Bird Food to Attract the Birds
Do you appreciate nothing more in the morning than watching a blue-tit or a robin nibbling away at some bird food you laid out the night before on a perch in your garden? Bird lovers should be aware that the best way to successfully attract birds into coming into your garden on a regular basis is by making sure they have some good quality bird food to feast on. To look through a high-quality range of bird food, feeders, feeding stations, bird boxes and bird baths visit the Little Peckers online premium bird products store.
After setting everything up for the birdies, simply sit back and gradually watch them land in your garden and enjoy tucking into the food you have left out for them. If you are working remotely, what better to brighten up your day than admiring a bird from close-up making the most out of your garden or outdoor space?
Attract Hedgehogs into Your Garden
According to a report published in February 2018 called the State of Britain’s Hedgehogs, hedgehog numbers in the UK have unfortunately fallen by almost 50% since the turn of the millennium. So how can you protect hedgehogs and turn your garden into a safe haven adapted for them?
One way to attract hedgehogs into your garden is by making sure there are deliberate holes made in your fence or hedge, so hedgehogs are able to have a passageway to enter your garden.
Another way is to set up a ‘hedgehog house’ made of wood to provide them with essential shelter and food. You can purchase ready-made hedgehog houses made from recycled materials or build one yourself using some logs and wood. Logs organised in an orderly way can provide a great roof and shelter for hedgehogs to sleep in.
You should also leave water out in small dishes all around your garden, so hedgehogs have somewhere to drink from, leave a dish close to your hedgehog house. In the winter months when a lot of water is frozen your small dishes of water will be much appreciated by hedgehogs and other wildlife visitors to your garden.
You should be wary that hedgehogs can be prey to foxes and birds. And they are for the most part nocturnal creatures.
Encourage Red Squirrels to Your Garden
Red squirrels are stunning creatures and so it’s no surprise that you may be interested in learning how you can encourage them to visiting your garden. Red squirrels are much rarer to see nowadays than grey squirrels and their numbers have been on the decline over the years due to grey squirrels carrying viruses deadly to red squirrels, deforestation, and an increase in road traffic. So how can you attract red squirrels into your garden?
Red squirrels enjoy spending lots of their time high in trees, so grow large green trees in your garden such as birch, ash, and willow trees to attract them. Also, try to make an effort to grow bushes and shrubs that grow fruits, nuts, seeds and berries.
Red squirrels also love to eat small insects so it could be a good idea to leave out logs and rocks around your garden to encourage insects that they can feed on.
Putting out special dishes of seeds and nuts which red squirrels particularly enjoy eating, such as pine nuts and hazelnuts, is another way to encourage them into your garden. Make sure you place them high up as red squirrels prefer to be higher up. By taking measures to encourage red squirrels into your garden you will inevitably discourage grey squirrels from visiting your garden. Grey squirrels prefer to forage on the floor of woodland for nuts, berries, seeds, acorns, and so on.
Appreciating your garden space is a great way of boosting your wellbeing that can lead to you adopting a brighter more outlook on life. Thinking of inventive ways, you can attract wildlife into your garden can be very rewarding when it pays off and keeps you sharp and observant of nature on your doorstep. After taking these little steps and learning about how to modify your outdoor space to attract garden creatures, you will you never look at birds, hedgehogs, or squirrels in the same way ever again.
