Author: Georgia Locock

Day two in the Lake District.

Posted on by Georgia Locock

Last week I spent five days in the Lake District. On the second day of our trip we went on the hunt for red squirrels. On the way to our first red squirrel destination we visited the popular tourist attraction which was Windermere, here I took some photos of the lovely views.

The first place place we visited looking for red squirrels was a cafe called Squirrel’s Pantary in Cockermouth. Here we sat down and enjoyed some afternoon tea, the cafe featured on BBC Springwatch a few years ago because of it’s rare visitors. Unfortunately though we didn’t see any. Here’s a link to the cafes website – http://www.photographers-resource.co.uk/Wildlife/locations/mammals/LG/Squirrels_Pantry.htm

We didn’t give up there though, we were back on the road and off to a place called Dodds Wood which was recommended to us as a good place to see the reds. Dodds Wood, near Keswich, towers over Bassenthwaite Lake and has unrivaled views from Derwent Water to the South and to the hills of Dumfries and Galloway. Once we’d parked we followed the long trek up to the first Osprey Viewpoint, although it was hard work it was well worth it to see such spectacular views! Ospreys are also seen from the viewpoint as they have a nest along Bassenthwaite Lake and they can also been seen fishing in the lake too but we didn’t see any Osprey. As soon as we arrived at the viewing point though, I saw a Red Squirrel which was very exciting! Altogether we saw two different reds and I even managed to get some photos too! I have seen red squirrels before but this was about five years ago in the Isle of Wright. It was a real treat to see them here though! You can read more about the Ospreys and other wildlife at Dodds Wood here on there website –        

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                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Here are some photos that I took.

The views over Windermere.

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IMGP4286 Walking through Dodds Wood.

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IMGP4271  The view from the Osprey viewing point at Dodds Wood.

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rabbit   As you can see, they weren’t the most photogenic red squirrels.redback

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 A road sign near the Squirrel’s pantry cafe, not very often is it that you see road signs like this!

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Day one in the Lake District.

Posted on by Georgia Locock

As I had last week off school I spent five days in the Lake District, Monday to Friday, in the Lakes. We stopped at a place called Flookburgh which isn’t far from Kendal. Over the week I managed to see lots of different wonderful wildlife, scenic views and much more!

This time last week we had arrived where we were staying and we’d had a look around. We weren’t stopping that far from the sea, here are some of the photos I took on the first day.

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Guest blog post – Magpies.

Posted on by Georgia Locock

Finding people my age who are like minded about wildlife and the outdoors is very rare. However, a few weeks ago I visited a blog by a girl called Emily who is a similar age to me. Her blog is called ‘Nuts about Nature’ and is quite similar to mine. It’s a brilliant blog and I highly recommend everyone follows this link to it – http://nutsaboutnature98.blogspot.co.uk/

After having a look through her blog and what she gets up to I decided to ask her if she’d do a guest blog post for me on my blog, this is the first one of these I’ve ever done and here it is.

Hi, I’m Emily and I have a little nature blog called ‘Nuts about Nature’. I hope you enjoy this guest post I am doing on Georgia’s blog today!

A little while ago I noticed that a pair of Magpies were collecting nesting materials from my garden. I’d never seen Magpies in my garden before, so I was so happy to see that they were using materials from my garden to make their nest.

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After collecting a ‘beak-full’ of straw, grass and moss they flew straight to their nesting site. Which is very close to where I live, so I had a perfect viewpoint!
I also saw one of the Magpies break twigs off of a tree, some were longer than the bird itself!

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A few days ago, after the Magpies had finished building their traditional untidy and large nest I decided to walk up to the tree they chose to nest in.

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If you look closely in the photo above, you can see the female Magpie sat in her nest, incubating the eggs. The males feed the females throughout the whole incubating period. Also, I recently found out that when food is scarce, Magpies use their sharp beaks to dig little holes in the ground around their territory to hide food. They then cover the hole over with grass, stones or leaves.

Female Magpies usually lay around six green-blue eggs which have brown spots, she then incubates them for around two and a half weeks. Both of the parents feed the chicks, but if there isn’t much food around, the older chicks – which are usually stronger – get all of the food. This means that some of the chicks will survive.

I reckon that the Magpies finished building their nest approximately two weeks ago, so I’m expecting to see both the parents busy searching for food to feed chicks very soon!

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I’m looking forward to seeing the Magpie fledglings fly around. They usually stay in their parents’ territory for a few months, normally until around September time.

It’s amazing that all the different birds are so busy at this time of year. Up until a year ago, I never realised just how clever and interesting birds are!

 

Bugs flood to new hotel!

Posted on by Georgia Locock

Today I created a new feature for my garden, a bug hotel. The bug hotel which I built, with the help of my younger brother, consists of four floors. On the top of the new garden feature I have a small log pile then on every story there are different materials which were naturally sourced from either my garden or my local woods. It was extremely fun and easy to construct, even though it was chucking it down with rain and we both got totally soaked! The different materials which I used in my bug hotel were bamboo sticks, bricks, planks of wood, broken plant pots, stones and rocks, hay, bark, twigs, logs, moss, tree cuttings, pine cones and mud!

To start off we stacked planks of wood and bricks up together then on the top I piled some logs up. Then with all the different materials that I had, I gradually filled every level bit by bit. In my new bug hotel I hope to attract a great variety of different creepy crawly’s and perhaps some small rodents.

Here are some photographs.

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