Do we have a Wildlife/Nature/Conservation topic?

[kinkytoes]

If so, where is it please?

If not, could we have one please?

I have a Ltl Acorn camera bought about 10 years ago, it's alright for my relative small garden. Runs off AA batteries but make sure you get the right ones, needs to be a certain minimum mAh. I think there are solar powered ones now for a similar price (around £100-150).

I still make do with my RSPB Puffins binoculars - think they're made by Viking, repairs go through them. They're technically for beginners/kids/teens but my eyes are quite close together (or perhaps I just have a normal woman sized head) so some of the bigger bins don't work for me! I am not on a Swarovski budget but if anyone has next step up recommendations I'd love to hear them.

But perhaps I should withhold that info until there's a topic!

I’ve just been on a walk to bring in the trail cameras. We have two.

a browning, which is robust but eats very expensive batteries.

and a recently acquired Helarctos which has a solar panel and recharges in situ which is so good.

we leave them both in remote parts of our nature reserve for a couple of weeks at a time. Sometimes the sheep are grazing and the captures are all lambs. But other times we get amazing wildlife footage.

These are ours. The straps / mount are great for getting good positioning

Does anyone know what happens next?

How long before MNHQ make a decision?

Do they actually announce a decision or will this just drift..

I'd definitely use a nature/wildlife topic.

Yes, agree that would be a good topic to have on here. I'd be interested. Would probably be of interest to a lot of people on the Gardening forum.

Yes please!

@Agapornis I started with Nikon Monarchs, which strike a nice balance between price and quality. The pair I have are small and light enough to take pretty much anywhere. I still use them regularly, even though I upgraded a few years ago, just because they’re so easy to chuck in a bag. The best bins are the ones you actually want to take with you on a walk!

I also recently looked through some RSPB Sparrowhawks and thought those were impressive. Not cheap, but not Swarovski budget either.

@nahthatsnotforme this time of the year, I mainly feed sunflower hearts, which are gobbled up by a lot of the birds that visit my garden (finches, tits, woodpecker). I also have a more basic seed mix, which is preferred by the sparrows and dunnocks. In winter, I will add some more fatty snacks (peanuts, suet etc) if it’s cold, as well as apples for the blackbirds. I have an extremely productive apple tree, so am lucky that I can do this for free. Last winter I had 6-8 blackbirds in my garden every day, all waiting for their daily apple treat 🥰

I didn’t know that about hedgehogs and mealworms, we do put mealworms out in a feeder but the starlings flap their wings and knock them to the floor. However a blackbird and some pigeons soon come along and pick them up, and if I top up the feeder in the morning they are all gone by night so I think my hedgehogs will be OK. Google says picking up a few here and there is OK, just don’t leave dishes of them on the ground. However we are seeing far less of our hedgehogs this year, we usually get them most nights in summer (we feed them with Spikes, leave out water, have gaps under the fences and a logpile so they are well catered for).

I find they are about the only thing that goes at this time of year. Suet pellets will but I don’t really think they are needed and it’s mainly jackdaws that take them, I’m not really trying to encourage those, I’d rather see small birds (we have a huge roost of jackdaws nearby).

I'd love a wildlife/nature topic. I'd have somewhere to get excited about the woodpecker I've just seen on my bird feeder. My first woodpecker sighting ever!

Thanks for the bird food tips. We have significantly reduced the amount we’ve been feeding, but because we assumed they’d be finding more in the garden to eat now. I had no idea chicks couldn’t eat bird seed but makes perfect sense, so thanks for that.
During this dry spell we have however been providing water.. we have 3 birdbaths around the garden and they’re all being used lots more than usual.

Haha great name 😁

I don't know.... hoping someone with more experience than me will know the answer!! 🤞

Yes, I would welcome this

@kinkytoesthank you for the welcome.

I don't know much about the Ozzy wildlife in afraid. But can contribute some very cool photos from NZ. I'm feel so lucky to live in a place with dolphins, Stingray and penguins as a regular part of my life.

It's a very different context here and I've had to get used to killing things in the name of conservation.

I'd liked a board on wildlife experiences too as we love to travel for these.

Just drinking my morning tea and watching a black bird hop back and forwards over a barrow load of compost (that I need to actually do something with later today!).

I would love a wildlife nature topic please

I’ve dug out a couple of the the threads demanding the Outdoorsy Shite topic (the working name for The Great Outdoors’
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/1411726-Walking-socks-Mnhq-I-want-to-ask-about-walking-socks-but-where-Where-do-they-go-There-is-no-natural-home-for-walking-socks

and
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/1427721-F4J?reply=30781364

…it took around a month and featured a sit-in on the redundant World Cup 2010 board. I was on there with a different name and the board was intended to cover more than just walking and camping.

I would love this! I've tried to find similar and ended up in the gardening topic, but it wasn't quite what I needed.

Great idea!

I would be really interested in this

I would definitely use a wildlife and wild life gardens how they are important for our environment and enhance our wellbeing and more importantly for highlighting local, national and world issues of giving green spaces however big or small.
This needs to be a topic scroll through any SM platform and gardens, wildlife, there is a global following for making areas however big or small natural to encourage pollinators, hedgehogs, birds, frogs and water souces .

A nature topic is one of the things I miss from the site I used to use (long story, no going back while it's dominated by nut-nuts). The other thing is a history and archaeology topic.

Why thank you! It's actually a description of my garden rather than me, honest.
5 years ago we bought this house with a very neglected hillside back garden and I have gradually landscaped it and planted mostly native perennials and native hedging. The perennials, chosen for a chalk hillside and for pollinators, are now thriving and are promiscuous thugs threatening to throttle each other - mostly I leave them to it. I have fenced off 2 wild patches that don't get touched at all, including a big log pile.
I waste hours just watching all of the bugs and birds.

There is a history board.
the problem with the many boards is ‘discoverability’.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/history_club