Shedding isolation from nature
I WAS out on a wonderful project this week, it’s called Our Sheds and it offers people who are feeling a little lonely and isolated a place to meet, chat and make things.
It was originally based on a project in Australia called Men in Sheds.
I mean, living in an isolated place Down Under would be just ridiculous – we are talking people living hundreds of miles away from each other.
That would be one heck of a journey to meet up once a week, but it has certainly taken off around the UK.
This was originally called Men In Sheds, at the Wildlife Trust’s Environmental Resource Centre on Bury Road, Bolton and some people thought it was a little bit sexist.
Men in Sheds has now become Our Sheds, because we have had an influx of women wanting to get involved in the camaraderie and to learn new skills: like joinery, where they are creating homes for hedgehogs, birds, bees and butterflies.
I constantly stress that being out in the wild, even in the Our Sheds woodyard, brings you closer to nature.
Sure enough, we rolled away a couple of logs and found three of the five most common UK amphibians hiding in the dampness.
First of all, we found a frog, quite a big one: a green fellow about half the size of my hand, desperately keen to hop out of my hand but I managed to take it to a safer place on the edge of the wood yard.
Next we found a much smaller toad, browner and more knobbly than our frog, but just as keen to get away before we could get it to safety.
Don’t worry, we did get it to the safe place.
Then we found a smooth newt.
This was young and absolutely tiny.
All three were looking for place to shelter; being amphibious they spend a lot of time away from the water and sleep throughout winter in log piles, leaf piles and under stones.
Unlike frogs and toads, newts have tails.
The only two amphibians missing were the palmate newt and the famous great crested newt, which is a nightmare beastie for developers.
Frogs are usually smaller than toads, which confused a few of use at Our Sheds.
They range in colour from olive-green to brown and can have stripes on their smooth skin.
They also have a brown patch behind their eye.
Toads are more muscular-looking creatures with warty skin: they are usually brown or grey-green in colour and spend less time in the water than frogs.
Frogs have much longer back legs than toads, enabling them to jump good distances.
Toads prefer to walk or hop with their shorter legs.
In spring you will see tadpoles with the frogs being a streaky brown and toads being black.
Once out of the pond, having a toad or a frog in our garden is good news because they will eat a lot of pests.
So, as well as learning about how to make benches and boxes, the Our Shed participants are now experts in some of the nature that is living all around them.