Top Ten Wildlife Gardening Tips for 2023

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, 29 December 2022
Top Ten Wildlife Gardening Tips for 2023
© John Robert Charlton

January is the perfect month to start thinking about making your garden or outside space more friendly for wildlife. You can help animals and birds make it through the winter and plan ahead for the spring and summer.

Here are our Top Ten Tasks for your wildlife garden in January

  1. Hang bird feeder and put out food on the ground and bird table
  2. Make sure your bird bath is topped up with fresh water and not frozen
  3. Regularly clean bird feeders, bird tables and bird bath
  4. Dig a pond or create a bog garden
  5. Trim back shrubs and trees once all their berries and fruit have been eaten
  6. Plant a deciduous tree that produces berries or fruit if you have the space – try Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) – blackbirds love it!
  7. Make a log or rock pile to create areas of shelter for wildlife
  8. Build a compost bin
  9. Plan a wild flower meadow for spring sowing or planting
  10. Buy or build a bee nesting box in your garden

Find out more about encouraging wildlife into your garden throughout the year.

Bird feeder film by David Plummer

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Comments

  • Margaret Devitt:

    Delightful film. I have a very small suburban garden with two seed feeders, two fat filled coconut halves and a few other bird attractions – crumpled whole meal bread & other scraps on the garden for the blackbirds, a bird bath. Apart from stripping my rowan bare in a day, probably blackbirds, the only birds to visit are sparrows, the very occasional wren & blue tit. Do you think the raucous gulls, collared doves that visit my neighbour’s birdtable scare off finches & other tits ? I do get lots of superb bumble bees.

    02 Jan 2023 12:57:00

  • Ros Hetreed:

    During the week of servere frost and snow before Christmas I worried about the tiny birds such as blue tits, goldfinches and nuthatches hiding in the hedges around the garden and was relieved to see them back on the feeders afterwards, plus robins of course who always seem to survive. I searched on the internet for reassurance that they would huddle together like long tailed tits but couldn’t find anything. Exactly how do they survive please?

    02 Jan 2023 14:37:00

  • Sussex Wildlife Trust:

    Robins will take shelter in bushes, near buildings, or in trees in bad weather. They also fluff up their feathers to trap air and keep more heat around their bodies. Robins stay active during the winter and need to eat lots. Robins are very territorial and aggressive to rivals for much of the year, but during winter they will be more tolerant, using energy to find food rather than fighting rivals.

  • Juliet Turner:

    We feed the birds on a variety of foods including peanuts sunflower seeds buggy bites and fatcakes. We have an acre of land with mature oak ash Holly and cherry trees. We have been growing a wildflower meadow with log piles .We see a wide range of wildlife in our garden and meadow. We haven’t seen any hedgehogs for 2-3 years. We do make sure there is plenty of places for a hedgehog to hibernate with scruffy areas.

    03 Jan 2023 17:55:00

  • Sue Mason:

    Super film and how lucky to have that variety of birds. Their colours look so beautiful against the snow.

    03 Jan 2023 18:50:00

  • Juliet Turner:

    We feed the birds on a variety of foods including peanuts sunflower seeds buggy bites and fatcakes. We have an acre of land with mature oak ash Holly and cherry trees. We have been growing a wildflower meadow with log piles .We see a wide range of wildlife in our garden and meadow. We haven’t seen any hedgehogs for 2-3 years. We do make sure there is plenty of places for a hedgehog to hibernate with scruffy areas.

    04 Jan 2023 17:18:00

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