Pet Gazette June 2019 | Page 14

14 | PET GAZETTE | WILD BIRDS GOING WILD Some of the visitors your customers may be lucky enough to be treated to in June J une is without doubt a bumper month for butterflies and if your customers are lucky, some may venture straight into their gardens or local green spaces. During bright and balmy June days, this spectacle may include the peacock, gatekeeper, and speckled wood butterfly. A brightly coloured butterfly, the peacock uses the large blue and white eyes on its wings to deter predators. The gatekeeper, also known as the hedge brown, is slightly smaller than the peacock and has orange and brown wings with a black dot on the forewings. June is the gatekeeper’s favourite month, as they love to bask in the warm sunshine with their wings wide open. The speckled wood, a brown butterfly speckled with cream and black spots, is a species of butterfly more commonly seen in woodland (as their name suggests), but it will also visit gardens, especially those near woodlands. Butterflies rarely have the garden to themselves for long, for June is the month that sees many a chirruping fledgling leave the warmth and security of their nest. Few gardens will escape the raucous chatter of juvenile starlings, but unlike their parents, young starlings are grey-brown in colour and lack the glossy shimmering black plumage. Eager to vie for their parent’s attention, these unruly youngsters will shriek and squabble amongst themselves, making it difficult to hear the other birds. Chances are if you have a nest box near you, you may soon come face to face with little bundles of blue and yellow. These are young Blue Tits. Despite their helpless pleas for food, these little birds rarely need to be rescued, as their parents are never far away. Once they have left the nest, these fledglings spend a few days on the ground before they are able to get to grips with the mammoth task of flying. Blue Tits have just one brood a year and can potentially lay up to 14 eggs, so the adults make every effort to ensure as many of their young make it to the fledgling stage as possible. Blue Tits prefer to feed their young on live food, making it even more important to have insect friendly plants in your garden and avoid using chemicals. Bird of the month – Puffin Birds come in all shapes and sizes but few are as recognisable, or popular, as the Puffin. Earning themselves the nickname of “clowns of the sea” or “sea Parrots” they are unmistakable with their black back and white underparts, distinctive black head with large pale cheeks and their brightly coloured bill. Their comical appearance is www.petgazette.biz heightened by their red and black eye-markings and bright orange legs. Despite their cute and cuddly appearance, Puffins are tough and resourceful birds spending most of their time out at sea, only coming to shore during the spring and summer to raise a family. They lay just one egg and both parents share feeding duties. Your customers can watch adults returning from their fishing forays with beakfuls of sand eels. But the decline of the puffin population is no laughing matter. Like many seabirds who call Britain home, Puffins are facing a tough time as they come up against changes to their habitat, new predator threats, lack of food and rising sea temperatures due to climate change. If your customers want to see puffins this summer, advise them to head to the coast and visit seabird colonies like RSPB's Bempton Cliffs (North Yorkshire), South Stack Cliffs (Anglesey) or RSPB Rathlin Island (Northern Island). Puffarazzi Puffins return to their nesting burrows in spring, ready to devote the next few months to raising their young. Although each Puffin pair will only raise one chick, this is hard work, as the birds often have to fly far out to sea to catch food for it. Climate change may be having a serious impact on Puffins as the plankton that feeds the fish they eat are moving north to escape warming oceans. In 2017 hundreds of people sent photos of the birds with beakfuls of fish to a team of RSPB scientists, so that they could work out what the colourful seabirds were feeding their young. They found that the numbers of sandeels, the fish Puffins mainly rely on for food, varied depending on where in the UK the birds were photographed. This year the project continues. If your customers would like to become part of Project Puffin's team of "Puffarazzi" by sending us their photos, tell them to visit the RSPB website for further details. To help your customers find out how they can give nature a home, tell them to visit: rspb.org.uk/homes June 2019