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Remembering Wild Birds Need to Feed so not Covering all my Soil - Trevor Sargent
- 09 January 2013
Around now, I prepare any vacant plots in 'Trevor's Kitchen Garden' for the winter hibernation. This generally means leaving plots fairly weed free and covering the soil with old carpet or cardboard weighed down with a few old bricks or rocks. The idea of covering bare patches is to prevent the rain from washing away nutrients in the soil and to make the ground easier to till in the springtime. As I was fastidiously covering my soil, I noticed a female blackbird and a robin snatching any food they could from the exposed earth before I effectively 'shut the door of their larder'! So why not leave a few inches of soil here and there open for my feathered friends over the winter, I thought.
The long tailed tits and their shorter tailed relatives, sparrows and chaffinches etc., all manage fine foraging for bugs in the bare tree branches and from the nut and seed feeders hanging from the birdtable.
. I am reminded by blog reader, Rosemary Charlton in Dublin West, to also put out some slices of apple for the likes of blackbirds and blackcaps feeding in the garden over winter. Thank you Rosemary for replying to this blogsite and I appreciate your suggestions and interest in biodiversity.
