Wildlife Friendly Chedburgh, Bury St. Edmunds Videos
Videos by Wildlife Friendly Chedburgh in Bury St. Edmunds. We are a small, Suffolk Village on a journey to make our outdoor spaces work better for wildlife.
WHOS THIS FOUND ON PADDOCK WAY?
The brightly coloured, hairy caterpillar of a Pale Tussock moth, that's who! 😍
It's less-bright adult form has equally fluffy legs and is a common flier in May and June.
Likely on a venture to find somewhere cosy to overwinter as a pupae... it's so important to leave some leaves and plant debris over winter to offer a safe and snug place for many creatures to overwinter 😴
to enable soundOther Wildlife Friendly Chedburgh videos
WHOS THIS FOUND ON PADDOCK WAY? The brightly coloured, hairy caterpillar of a Pale Tussock moth, that's who! 😍 It's less-bright adult form has equally fluffy legs and is a common flier in May and June. Likely on a venture to find somewhere cosy to overwinter as a pupae... it's so important to leave some leaves and plant debris over winter to offer a safe and snug place for many creatures to overwinter 😴
DIY BUG HOTELS 😍 A very easy way to reuse some of your recycling, create some hidey holes for mini beasts and even entertain the kids for a while! Quite simply collect a few clean tins and fill them with leaves, hollow stems, pine cones, bark, twigs... Use some wire or twine to hold them together and ta-dah 🤗 ! Place it in a sheltered spot (especially in windy Chedburgh!) and wait for beetles, bees and bugs to find it 😃 Did you spot this on our stall yesterday? 👀
BEE WOLF 🐝🐺
A large, solitary wasp and a killer of honey bees... (which after our recent talk by @suffolknaturalist we now know that isn’t a bad thing as honey bee populations can have a detrimental effect on our native pollinators) found on the sandy banks of nearby Breckland and on the Suffolk coast (this one has been filmed at RSPB minsmere)
This wasp species used to be extremely rare but it is now increasing in number and gradually working its way northward in the UK.
Female bee wolves dig burrows up to metre long, with up to 34 side burrows that end in brood chambers.
Once dug, she will go hunting for honey bee workers, paralysing them with a sting and carrying them back to her elaborate burrow. Up to six paralysed honey bees are placed in each brood chamber, then a single egg is laid on one of the bees and the chamber is sealed with sand. After hatching, the larva feeds on the cache of honey bees before spinning a cocoon to hibernate through winter, ready to emerge in spring.
What a phenomenal wasp 😍
Our perennial border is growing strongly and looking gorgeous! It’s covered with bees and offers flowers for all different insects 🐝
Some fantastic footage of a Badger clan (5 adults and 3 young) from a residents garden 😍 How amazing to have this many badger visitors 😍 Big thank you for sending us this footage. If you have any footage of wildlife in your garden or on your wanders, please send it in to us!
It’s INTERNATIONAL DAWN CHORUS day 🐦 !! So this morning, I went for a walk around the Village from 4am 🥱 to experience our local avian orchestra, with a back up from the local Cuckoo 🐦 It was wonderfully immersive 👂 I also got to see some bats, a herd of fallow deer, the “flower” moon and a beautiful pink sunrise over the misty fields. If you’re brave enough to get up early or even crack a window from 4am, you too can experience this natural wonder of birdsong filling the air!
RED MASON BEES🐝 The warmth of this weekend has lured out these fresh male red mason bees 🌞 🐝 now they’re in wait for the females to emerge.. the females are always a little late to the party! The red mason bee is a small, gingery bee that nests in hollow plant stems, in holes in cliffs, and in the crumbling mortar of old buildings. It is a solitary bee so, after mating, each female builds its own nest; she lines each ‘cell’ with mud and pollen and lays a single egg in each until the cavity is full. The larvae hatch and develop, pupating in autumn and hibernating over winter- until some Spring-time warmth lures them out! 🌞 The red mason bee is on the wing from late March, and feeds solely on pollen and nectar. You can help red mason bees and other solitary bees by adding a bee hotel to a sunny spot in your garden and surrounding it with nectar rich flowers! 🌸 We do have some bee hotels in the village Wildlife Garden- let’s hope they find them soon 😍
Sound on to hear this Common Pipistrelle echolocating behind the Wildlife Garden this evening 🦇 🌙 Bats have evolved a sophisticated method of using sound to enable them to navigate and find food in the dark called echolocation. They produce echolocation by emitting high frequency calls and listening to the echo. These sounds are ultrasonic and cannot normally be detected by human ears, instead we can use a variety of devices called “bat detectors” that translate these high pitched calls into a frequency we can hear.
More of our nest boxes are being used 😍 if you stand nearby you can hear the babies calling when their parents are nearby. Just be mindful not to disturb them as those chicks need as much food as possible! 🐛 You could sit on the Paddock Way meadow bench and watch them 🙂
Lawns have the power to help wildlife in so many ways... and it’s so easy to unlock that potential 💪 Simply let an area grow (you’ll be surprised at the wildflowers that already live in your lawn) or go a step further by scarifying the ground (to expose soil) and seeding it with a wildflower mix. We hope that our interactive “meadow area” on Paddock Way and our “mini meadow” in the Erskine Wildlife Garden will be able to demonstrate the postivity that long grass (and extra flowering species!) can bring to wildlife in Chedburgh 🌿
WHAT TEENY BIRD IS THIS?! 😮 This morning we spotted this itty bitty teeny weeny GOLDCREST down Queen’s Lane, darting from tree to tree in pursuit of insect snacks! The Goldcrest is the UK’s smallest bird. It sports a fabulous golden crown which has earned it the title of “King of the birds” in European folklore. Look closely; can you see it?! 👑
LONG-TAILED TITS 🐦 Spotted yesterday on the bridle way, a charismatic and squeaky flock of long-tailed tits 😍 They are easily recognisable, with tails longer than their bodies, distinctive colouring and noisy, social antics. They are usually spotted bouncing from tree to tree in an excitable gang of 8- 20, however in the Winter months they can be seen forming larger flocks with other tit species. Prior to dusk, they busily head off to their roost in thick shrubbery, such as hawthorn. They (quite adorably!) huddle together in a fluffy bundle to keep warm- being a tiny bird weighing less than a £1 coin , this is a vital for survival in the colder months!
CATKINS Breaking up those Wintery days and reminding us that Spring is on the way... these Alder and Hazel Catkins (and teeny weeny pink female Hazel flowers- look closely 👀) were looking glorious at nearby @swtlackfordlakes today. Catkins are long, slim and often petal-less flowers, that mostly rely on wind for pollination. A number of our native trees produce catkins in order to reproduce. The name Catkin is derived from the Dutch word katteken, which means kitten, since the flowers look like fluffy kitten tails 🐈 They’re also known as lamb’s tails for the same reason 🐑 Look out for them over the coming months, dangling and dancing on the branches of the following trees- Hazel, Alder, Silver Birch, Oak and Willow. 🌳
There’s very few hedgerows in the Village that have not been severely cut back this Autumn, but the ones that have been left alone offer a bountiful feast of berries, like these Haw-berries. These few areas show why it’s so important to leave the cutting back until late Winter, when the berries have long been eaten and before nesting season begins. If more hedgerows were managed in this way- with just a simple change to their maintenance schedule, they could be an invaluable and bountiful resource to wildlife.
KNITTING BEES 🧶 Please welcome the Wool Carder Bee 🐝 These solitary bees get the name 'carder' from their behaviour of scraping hair from the leaves of 'woolly' leaved plants such as Lamb's-ear and Mullein to wrap their eggs in. The males are furiously territorial over these plants, guarding them against, not just other males, but other insects! They are equipped with a set of spikes on their abdomen, which they use to wrestle and crush other insects against if they dare to enter their territory! 😲 You can attract Wool Carder Bees to your garden by growing the above “woolly” plants, along with legumes, such as Vetches and Birds Foot Trefoil (see here) and providing nesting cavities, such as hollow stems, dead wood and bee hotels.
BAT DETECTING 🦇 On a recent walk around Chedburgh and Chevington with our bat detector, we picked up 3 different species of bat. Our sightings and soundings were primarily Soprano Pipistrelles (on this video) and our smallest bat- the Common Pipistrelle, so tiny it can fit into a matchbox. These tiny bats, with their brown fur and black wings, live on a diet of small insects and roost in tree crevices, bird boxes and roof spaces. We also (with much excitement) picked up the echolocation calls of a Noctule bat, which is our largest UK bat, with a wingspan up to 40cm. The Noctule bat has rich, golden brown fur, roosts in tree holes and can be seen higher in the sky- flying strong and fast over the tree canopy, hunting insects, such as cockchafers and other flying beetles. We can help support bats by... 🦇 Adding bat boxes to houses and trees to offer roosting and hibernation sites 🦇 Boosting the insect population in our gardens and green spaces through the addition of wild spaces, native hedging, mini meadows, less frequent mowing, log piles, ponds and adding more flowers! 🦇 Turn off unnecessary lights outdoors as this can stress and confuse our wildlife 🦇 Stop using chemicals and pesticides