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.

Scottish wildcat.

Part one.

The wildcat is, pound for pound, one of the most impressive predators in the world. The secretive feline used to roam across the UK, just as the lynx and the wolf once did, but today, there are fewer than four hundred wildcats remaining in the sottish highlands. They may look a little like your pet cat but they are tough, untameable and sometimes called the tiger of the highlands. The wildcat resemble a very muscular domestic tabby in appearance, with yellow/ medium-brown fur and black spots or stripes. Most apparent is the beautiful tail , which is thick and ringed with perfect bands of black and brown ending in a blunt black tip. The Scottish form is the largest in the wildcat family, with males typically between 6-9 kgs and females between 5-7 kgs. This is about 50% larger than a domestic cat. A study suggests that current house cats are descendants from a group of self-domesticating wildcats 10,000 years ago, somewhere in Eastern Europe. Fossil remains suggest that the biggest ever wildcat measured 1.2 m from nose to tail and may gave weighed 14 kgs.

Beltain

Beltain is a celebration of the fertility and rampant potency of the life force. All of nature is growing and manifesting now in a wild whirl of creative energy. This is the time to celebrate unions of all kinds, fertility and manifestation on many different levels, love, sexuality and fruitfulness. It is a time to be in touch with the instinctive wild forces within and without, to be aware of the potency of the life force and its power on the physical, spiritual and mystical levels. This is the beginning of the final and most actively potent of the waxing phase of the sun`s cycle. All of life is bursting with fertility and the power of its own potential. Everything is in the process of becoming. This is the peak of the spring season and the beginning of summer, the onset of the growing season when the earth is clothed in green, the vibration of love and the heart chakra. Flowers are everywhere, birds and animals are having their young, the sounds of birdsong fill the air. It is a time of sunshine and rain, swelling and bursting, rising sap and fresh new growth. The earths energies are at their most active. The dragon paths can be intuitively sensed or dowsed. This is the perfect time for walking these ancient energy paths.Beltain energy of one of reverence for all of life, celebrating and honouring the fertility which grows from the union of opposites. It is about the sacredness and spirituality of love and sexual pleasure, and deep connections of the heart. These life changing forces are not just the focus of sexual union, but unions of all kinds. Integrity of spirit and power brings the physical and spiritual into balance. This creates a strong life force energy which becomes the light and eternal love of spiritual energy.

The muridae family.

Part one the wood mouse.

The wood mouse or the long tailed field mouse is probably the most widespread and abundant of all our British mammals. It is not just confined to woodlands though as its name suggests, it will thrive in hedge rows along with more open spaces including moorlands, mountains sides and our gardens where it will live in our sheds and out buildings. Wood mice do not have a strong smell to them unlike house mice. The wood mouse is very active, running and bounding from place to place with their front feet tucked up and venturing into open places where other small mammals will rarely go. As quick as they can be though if you listen out for them as you are taking a walk you will come across them in the undergrowth. Wood mice used to only move under cover of darkness, but they now seem to be moving alot during daylight hours. They are still taken frequently by owls and cats and some raptors. Most wood mice will stay in a general area, but may travel up to a quarter of a mile during the day or night. During a cold winter they have been known to go into a torpid state(almost like hibernation) during this state the use less energy than normal. This enables them to survive food shortages. The population is always at its lowest after a cold winter, but their numbers soon pick up. They start to breed in March, the female might bear up to four litters during one year. Each of the litters may contain up to five young. They rarely live over two years in the wild. Its sandy brown coat and large ears and eyes help to distinguish the wood mouse. Their underparts are white with a yellow streak on the chest with their long tail being slightly haired. They are about three and a half inches in length. When a wood mouse becomes frightened, they often wash and groom themselves. They do this by sitting on their haunches and licking vigorously at their armpits, forelimbs and belly. Wood mice dig their own burrow system, where they store food and spend their time when they are not foraging for food. The young mice are born in the nest chamber. Autumn fruits such as hawthorns and other berries are part of a wood mice`s diet, often using an old birds nest to store them.Seeds are the wood mouses main food, along with shoots and buds. They will also eat snails by nibbling their way through its shell. Wood mice are always cautious when approaching something they are not sure of. They have an acute sense of smell and rely on odours as a means of recognising other mice. They have large hind feet that enables them to leap almost like kangaroos.