RG, do you have good empty structures about the place? I hear it's that loss that is leading decline.
Sorry Fire - I missed your question. Not really - the main pipistrelle colony is in the loft of the old farmhouse (Victorian) next door. I suspect it has more to do with food than housing - we have a large area of what was sheep pasture and is now overgrown and there are multiple springs here, so there are small watercourses, wet ditches and boggy bits all around us. There's also a very old though small area of woodland a few hundred yards away. It's got a spring fed stream in it. It's extremely steeply sloping, so no one goes in there, other than us occasionally picking up wind fall firewood and the farmer to extract a lost sheep now and then. Therefore there is masses of dead wood lying and very little disturbance, so insect life - and the things that feed on them - abound.
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Gotta love those spiders Nice partridge Sheps. Many years ago, and in another house, we had a little flock of grey [?]ones in the garden during a fairly stiff winter when the snow and ice had frozen and there was a shortage of food around for all sorts of birds. I didn't really catch any good pix last time I walked - the buzzard which flew right over me when I was lying down doing my exercises [don't ask!] obstinately refused to come back anywhere near me whenever I got the camera out The dragonflies were being equally awkward, but they were having a great time flitting around all the marshy bits This wee guy made me laugh
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
Posts
@wild edges not from a hide, but photographed on one of the many stone walls up in the Yorkshire Dales.
I suspect it has more to do with food than housing - we have a large area of what was sheep pasture and is now overgrown and there are multiple springs here, so there are small watercourses, wet ditches and boggy bits all around us. There's also a very old though small area of woodland a few hundred yards away. It's got a spring fed stream in it. It's extremely steeply sloping, so no one goes in there, other than us occasionally picking up wind fall firewood and the farmer to extract a lost sheep now and then. Therefore there is masses of dead wood lying and very little disturbance, so insect life - and the things that feed on them - abound.
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Nice partridge Sheps. Many years ago, and in another house, we had a little flock of grey [?]ones in the garden during a fairly stiff winter when the snow and ice had frozen and there was a shortage of food around for all sorts of birds.
I didn't really catch any good pix last time I walked - the buzzard which flew right over me when I was lying down doing my exercises [don't ask!] obstinately refused to come back anywhere near me whenever I got the camera out
The dragonflies were being equally awkward, but they were having a great time flitting around all the marshy bits
This wee guy made me laugh
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...