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| 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
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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