Horringer Village Website

The Wildlife Group was started in February 2004. Since then the group has carried out a survey of wildlife in village gardens and a report of the findings can be found below. The group also carried out recording work for the BTO Migration Watch, has organised Dawn Chorus Walks, fund raising stalls at the Village Fete and decorated a tree for the Christmas Tree Festival in St. Leonard’s Church.

The next project is a survey of hedgerows within the Parish as part of the Suffolk Hedgerow Survey. This is a large project and volunteers to help with the survey work (under guidance) will be welcome to join in. Please contact Jean Booth on 01284 735559 or Mel Sheard on 01284 735305 for further information

Survey of Garden Wildlife in Horringer

One of the outcomes of the work on the Parish Plan for Horringer-cum-Ickworth was the establishment of a local wildlife group. Once set up one of the first things that people wanted to do was to find out more about what went on in our village gardens. Following consultation with the Suffolk Wildlife Trust survey forms were obtained and distributed to those who had expressed interest in helping carry out local wildlife audits. In the first instance three forms were used:

• A general form to capture information about the gardens, grid reference. size and layout, specific features such as proximity to woods and farmland, use of insecticides and herbicides and ways in which the garden was operated to encourage wild life.
• Forms on which to record visits by birds and the types of bird feed offered month by month.
• Forms on which to record visits by mammals, amphibians and butterflies.

At the end of the survey periods forms were returned to the group co-ordinators and a simple analysis carried out prior to the forms being sent to Suffolk Wildlife Trust for onward despatch to the Suffolk Biological Records Centre to be entered into a computer database. The results of the year long survey have been analysed to give an indication of the species of birds and mammals most commonly seen in village gardens. These are shown in the following table. The figures represent the frequency that the bird or animal was seen. A score of 100 would indicate that it was seen in every garden each month of the year.

Frequency of bird species		Frequency of mammals
Collared Dove	98.5	Cat	73.9
Blackbird	97.7	Grey Squirrel	45.5
Blue Tit	90.1	Rabbit	30.6
Woodpigeon	87.1	Dog	25.0
Robin	87.8	Muntjac Deer	19.7
Great Tit	84.0	Mole	17.4
Starling	76.5	Common Shrew	11.4
Magpie	69.6	Red Fox	8.3
House Sparrow	69.0	Wood Mouse	7.2
Chaffinch	63.4	Roe Deer	6.0

It is not surprising that Collared Doves should be top of the list for birds. They are big birds, easy to identify and they make a lot of noise. For a bird that only found its way to our country about 50 years ago it really has done well. The survey was undertaken in two separate periods, April -September and October-March and there were differences between the two. House sparrows, greenfinches, starlings and song thrushes dropped out of the top ten bird list in the October to March period and were replaced by coal tits, chaffinches and dunnocks. This may be an effect of numbers of gardens reporting or it may have been influenced by the mild October when there was lots of fruit and food elsewhere and numbers of birds in gardens were low anyway.

In total 49 different bird species were reported in Horringer gardens including Blackcap and White throat in summer and Redwing and Fieldfare in winter. Although many of the mammals frequently seen are regarded as pests there are nevertheless a wide variety of creatures to be found as the table above shows. Newts were seen in several of the gardens with ponds and one of them even reported great crested newts. Fourteen kinds of butterfly were reported with Small Whites being most common The way in which people encouraged wild life into their gardens is also interesting. Every garden had a bird food feeder with feed in winter, 71% had butterfly plants, 64% had nest boxes, and 57% had a log pile and compost heaps featured in 51%. Water and peanuts were provided in about 60% of gardens even in summer. There were ponds in just over a third of the gardens. Gardeners were also questioned about use of pesticides in their gardens. Half of gardeners never used insecticides and half used them occasionally. No one used them frequently. Two thirds of the gardeners did not use slug pellets. There was a 60/40 split between those who never used peat based composts and those who used them occasionally. Herbicides were used occasionally in half of the gardens, but 40% of gardeners never used them at all.

This presents an interesting look into what wildlife are to be seen in our gardens if people look out for them and more wildlife can be brought into gardens if householders take steps to encourage them by creating good habitats, food, water and shelter. This survey is only a snap shot in time but it does provide a valuable reference point for anyone wishing to make comparisons in future. Thanks are due to all those people who took time to record wild life in their gardens and to help build up a picture of Horringer wildlife. More activities and surveys are planned by the wildlife group and if anyone wishes to get involved please let me know, Mel Sheard Garden Wildlife Survey Co-ordinator.