Blogs

Some spooky goings on in the wildlife enquiries team today with a series of calls about bats. Some turning up in peoples houses and others wanting to know more about them and how to encourage them. Most bats are going to be looking for safe places to hibernate over the cold winter months over the next...

Hi everyone, We had a very special and very rare visitor to Saltholme on Saturday - a Nathusius' pipistrelle called Bella. As part of Saltholme's first ever Halloween weekend, Ian Bond from the Durham Bat Group brought Bella along to Saltholme to give visitors and exciting insight into...

Hi Dye This sounds like a really interesting project and it would be great if you could share some pictures of the site with us so we can see what it looks like. Doggie has given a couple of good links there for planting advice and ponds, a water feature has great benefits to various wildlife and...

There are few things in life as exciting as creeping around the woods at night with a torch in one hand and a bat detector in the other. On Saturday evening I found myself doing exactly that - joined by a group of very brave children and their parents as we explored Strumpshaw Fen looking for bats...

From 4pm on Saturday 6 th August to 4pm on Sunday 7 th August 2011 we had a BioBlitz at RSPB Ynys-hir. Experts and novices joined forces to count as many different species as they could on the reserve. It was an exciting 24 hours of events looking for birds, mammals, fungi, moths, insects, plants and...

Just back from two weeks' hols. Haven't seen them myself yet, but my cat sitter says I have bats inside above the door of the garage- where the cat lives. a) is this a good thing? Will we not disturb them as we go in and out? If they fall off- which I'm told they have a couple of times...

Last night saw the reserve host it's annual bat and moth night (or "mat and both night" as I seem to keep saying) under the title of 'Creatures of the Night'. At 9pm, as the rain was beginning to fall, the group of 20+ gathered in the classroom. Morgan Bowers (who you can...

Many of you may have already heard about this via Springwatch but in case you missed it, the Bat Conservation Trust are running a number of different surveys one of which everyone can get involved with. It is called the sunset/sunrise and you can find out more and download the survey forms by clicking...

This week, to celebrate Make Your Nature Count , we'll be spotlighting some of the special creatures we're asking you to look for in your gardens and parks. Today it's all about bats. Now is a good time to look out for bats in your garden because they are most active during the summer...

Gulls have also adapted to the increase in artificial light in urban areas, making use of the light to increase their foraging time. They seem to have cottoned on to the late night kebab and chip eating habits of humans in the UK coastal towns and can regularly be seen flying about the streets in the...

Last night we ran our first Bat event of the year with Crispin from the Sussex Bat Group. It is always a bit of a worry with any guided walk ‘what if we don’t find what we are looking for’, and at night you can sometimes be limited with alternatives! However, last night I needn’t...

Hi, Yesterday I noticed a bat flying high in my garden all around some mature Corsican pines (I think they probably live there). What made this rather unusual is that it was 1pm in the afternoon, and very sunny! It was flying around for about 10 minutes without stopping, very irratically so I wondered...

This photo was taken in my back garden at late afternoon.

This photo was taken in my back garden at late afternoon.

Whoosh... it flashes past Like a boomerang slicing through the summer night. Then another, and another. Silhouettes darting across the sky. devouring their nights feast with lightning speed. Where our garden gives way to woodland the creatures come. But what species are they they're so fast and in...

Here at Sandwell Valley we like to think we're a bit out of the norm and us Black Country folk could be accused of being a different breed altogether. Take for instance our approach to birdwatching; yes we can be 'one-eyed', yes we can be obtuse; yes we can be single-minded but above all...

Hey Everyone With Halloween round the corner, here is a truly Spooky Wildlife blog for you all. Hope you find it interesting as I had fun researching it ........... Enjoy http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/blogs/wildlife/archive/2010/10/27/rspb-halloween.aspx Happy Halloween! Tom

It is interesting that you should mention that, the bright red and black markings are usually seen by diurnal predators as a warning in the same way that many ladybird species share these colours. Obviously the camouflage against bark with the neutral colours is the first line of defence but if harassed...

Hello Incorporating wildlife features into outbuildings is a great idea and the options are endless...well, there are quite a few! Swallows generally nest close by to their main foraging areas such as open grassland so if you do not get them around you may struggle to encourage them in with artificial...

There's an animal at Strumpshaw Fen that can eat 3,000 insects in one night, lives for up to 16 years, and is barely bigger than a human's thumb. Can you guess what it is? If you visit at dusk you'll see lots of them - I'm talking about pipistrelles, Britain's smallest and most...