Gifts for nature at Christmas
My favourite tree decorations are the wonderfully colourful birds that land on the trees and bushes outside my kitchen window. The very Christmassy robin is not at all fussy about where they nest so if you have any old teapots or boots, you can make a few potential nesting sites for robins, a xed to your house, shed or garden wall.
Of course, the best places are natural, and a place to shelter isn’t much good if there is no food around, so if you really want to help, then gradually replace fence or wall boundaries with living hedges – food and shelter in one. Remember, only plant native Irish plants. You will be pushed towards non-native hedge selections in the garden centre, but the foundation of all life is native plant communities. Anything else is a garden industry-supporting narrative, not a nature supporting one. This includes the non-native pollinator friendly plants. Don’t fall for it.
It’s very di cult for wildlife to nd clean sources of water these days, so a good support is a clean bowl of water, sunken into the ground so that the lip is at ground level, with some twigs or stones to make a safe exit place, so that if anyone falls in, they can escape with ease. A bird bath is also very important, and very entertaining if they take to it. Keep the water fresh and remember that on very cold days, it may need some hot water to melt it.
If you are already on board our Ark movement, you will know that the winter larder for birds and small mammals is the seed heads from grasses and wild owers and herbs, left standing overwinter, and not ‘tidied up’. It is so much better to leave them forage themselves, but we have taken almost everything from them in our manicured gardens lled with non-native plants, and it may take a moment to restore their pantries, our native plant ecosystems. Until then, let’s try keep them alive and make a feeding station for them. Stock their larder with sun ower hearts, peanuts, fat balls and dried fruits. Just remember to keep your feeding station clean for them. Leave the tempting decorative berries on the trees; they need them to survive. The berries on holly and ivy are high in fat, as are all our native berries. Non-native berries are usually high in sugar, not much good to the birds and small mammals when they are trying to build up their fat layers to keep them going through the winter. Traditionally, holly and ivy were brought into our houses to remind the house of the abundance of summer, to bring hope into the dark mid-winter that all will be well again, now that the sun was on a promise to return. If you can avoid buying holly on the street, please do. It is usually ruthlessly and illegally cut down and there is so little of it left to sustain our birds, that we really need to leave it be.
Birdwatch Ireland sell lovely birdhouses with cameras in them. This is more of gift to yourself really, as it’s incredible to be able to connect your television to the dramatic miracles happening in the bird box: nest building, egg laying, chick feeding and nally, watching them leave the nest.
The best gift you can give them is to build an Ark, whether it is a windowsill or a garden you have under your care. It can cost you nothing and the simple steps are on wearetheark.org. Patch by patch, we can reweave this web of life back together again.
Mary Reynolds no longer describes herself as a gardener but as a guardian, focusing on restoring native biodiversity to our gardens (and balconies and terraces), enhancing their natural beauty, while encouraging wildlife, working with the seasons and helping conserve native Irish species. wearetheark.org