Summer update on Unit wildlife

The Unit's wildflower meadow is blooming, and the Unit Oak is in leaf. This year we have several biennials flowering- the fox gloves giving impressive flower spikes in colours from pale pink to dark purple, and the teasels will stay standing after the purple flowers are gone, to provide seeds for birds such as goldfinches in the winter. The flowers have attracted a large number of bees, which seem to particularly like the red campion and fox gloves.

This year the Director's bird box was used by Great Tits– we had 9 eggs laid, all hatched on 28th April, and 5 fledged on the 17th May. Great tits would normally feed their young mainly on the green moth caterpillars that have a population boom in early May, but our birds were seen to be bringing a much larger number of spiders than you might expect, maybe due to a lack of trees in the area to support the moth larvae.

Below are two compilation videos- one from the box interior (we have a live feed from the box to a monitor in reception), showing the growth of the chicks; and the other an editted series of visits recorded from outside the box.