The nest building treasure hunt.

Have you ever stopped to consider all the materials a bird must collect for its nest? Take a blackbirds shopping list. The blackbird will use fine grass for the lining of the nest, along with over one hundred sticks that are not to brittle to make the nest. Along with these materials the blackbird will also use straw for the cup of the nest, many beakfuls of moss and some damp mud will also be used to hold the nest together. Other garden birds need feathers, rootlets, spider silk, animal fur and lichens. Will they find what they need in your garden? It doesn`t mean that you have to be untidy- just leave little piles of suitable materials for birds to find rather than burning or binning them.

Honey bee- the queen`s role.

The queen bee presides over a colony of about 50,000 sterile females, known as workers, and 300 males known as drones. The functions of the queen are to lay eggs and maintain cohesion among the other members of the colony. She mates several times, and stores sperm in her body for the rest of her life. She uses it to fertilise most of her eggs, which will develop into either workers or queens. If she lays unfertilised eggs they will develop into drones. The worker bees decide whether fertilised eggs become workers or queens by controlling the food they give to the larvae. If a larvae is fed nothing but royal jelly, a protein secretion from the workers mouths, it will become a queen. But while the reigning queen is active she gives off a substance which inhibits the workers from producing more queens. The queen can live for up to five years. Drones exist simply to mate with a queen, and several from different colonies assemble on fine days to attract virgin queens. When the mated queen returns to the hive from her nuptial flight the drones are denied access and left defenceless to die. Most honey bee`s in Britain live in man made hives, but colonies are quite able to flourish in trees or old buildings. From October to April the hibernating bees steadily eat their store of winter food, moving up through the combs as a cluster. As the queen`s life draws to an end, she leaves the hive in May in a swarm, or dies in the hive.

Scottish wildcat.

Part three.

Wildcats typically breed only once a year, from January to March, with most births between April and May. Litters of kittens are typically between one and five. Males tend to hold larger territories than females, and their ranges often overlap with three to six neighbouring females. Wildcats of both sexes mark their ranges by depositing faeces in prominent locations and by leaving scent marks through urine spraying, cheek rubbing and scratching the ground. Female wildcats come into heat once a year for a short period in January or February and advertise their readiness for mating through scent marking and night time caterwauling miaows. If a male is in the locality, the  pair come together for a brief mating before parting forever. The wildcat is a carnivore, most of its prey consists of small mammals, mainly rodents and rabbits. Wildcats are less fearful of water than domestic cats and are thought to occasionally fish, dipping their paws into shallow burns or loch edges to try and scoop out passing fish.

Scottish wildcat.

Part two.

Originally a forest creature, Scotland's heavy deforestation has forced the wildcat to evolve and utilise everything available to it. They require some degree of cover from which to stalk or ambush their prey, but almost any form of cover is suitable, including scrubland, rocky terrain and agricultural land. The main threats to the survival of the wildcat are hybridisation, and competition with feral domestic cats. Other significant threats are on-going habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation in some areas. Road kill and in some areas, persecution are also problems.