What a difference a few weeks makes. My last blog was written whilst watching an overcast, rainy, and to be quite honest, miserable sky!
Today I’m sat in the Wildlife Garden, surrounded by greenery, bird song and the warmth of glorious sunshine!
It’s quite apt to be sat in our garden writing this blog, especially as of yesterday (5th June) it’s Garden Wildlife Week 2023.
This week we celebrate the wonderful little ecosystems created for and by wildlife and all the little beauties that live within!
If you’ve been to the castle before you may have seen our Wildlife Garden (next to the Maze!), or even had a wander around it. If you haven’t, I’m here to explain more.
Our Wildlife Garden came from an idea that we had in our department, this idea was to share methods that we use to help wildlife across the Estate. We were trying to find a way to answer everyone’s questions and give a little insight into what we do in the wider area!
If you’ve read my blogs before you’ll have noticed a huge variety of Wildlife lives here and we help in more ways than you might think!
It’s difficult to show you guys everything as there’s a huge space to cover and numerous different species, so the garden allows us to share this information in one compact information hub!
Our garden is full of examples of what we do, there is a bat box, a barn owl box, bug hotels, bird feeders and houses and even a manmade badger sett! We’ve got bug hotels, reptile tins, and loads of information for you to read. All of the things you see are placed around the estate in large numbers, we do research to see where is best and monitor species using them. We can’t always show this to visitors as a lot of the wildlife is off of the public route.
The hope is to share some ideas on how you can also help wildlife at home, but also to give you all a view into the huge ecosystem that is Leeds Castle, and all the wildlife that happily thrives here.
The garden is incredibly active with wildlife too! There’s often squirrels, mice and rabbits running through, tonnes of bugs and spiders, butterflies and lots of birds too.
At this moment, I’m watching a Kestrel directly above the garden, there’s Great Tit and Blue Tit’s buzzing around, a Jay on the floor routing through the grass along with numerous Robins!
If you’re a bit of a Wildlife fan like me, then next time you are visiting you should check out our information shed too. It’s located at the entrance of the Bird of Prey Centre and is full of interesting things!
It is currently under development but is still open for everyone to see. It’s full of colour, information, photographs, bird lists and hotspot areas to find certain species across the Estate. We’ve also installed a glass cabinet which houses skulls, skeletons, skins, nests and other fascinating objects – all found on or around the estate! There’s also a TV in there that monitors a bird feeder camera and breeding nest boxes for some of the residents in the Bird of Prey Centre, worth a look, especially this time of year!
Now, the blog this month, has been very Wildlife Information heavy (not a bad thing, obviously!) so, I’m going to end with a fluffier, adorable announcement.
Introducing the newest member of the Falconry team!
In the wild, in the UK, he’s the rarest species of Owl – The Long-Eared Owl…Greg!
We have a passionate and wonderful team of staff and volunteers, so if you’d like to know more or have any questions please get in touch!
The Falconry & Wildlife Team
