Look out for wild creatures and plants in and around the garden this summer
Corncockle
'The corncockle will self-seed with abandon in most gardens.'
The first of the native annual weeds to flower in my miniature cornfield is the exquisite corncockle – and it should be in yours, too. Its ancient history isn't really known, but it became an important cornfield weed, then was all but wiped out by selective weed killers. It will self-seed with abandon in most gardens.
Parrots
'The parakeet established itself here after numerous escapes from captivity.'
They wouldn't feature on most people's lists of garden birds, and I've never seen one in my Warwickshire garden, but it was on a visit to Kew recently when I saw flocks of them that I realised just how common the noisy, bright green Eurasian ring-necked parakeet has become in south-east England. It established itself here after numerous escapes from captivity over the past century and first began breeding about 30 years ago. It now outnumbers some long-established native bird species.
About the author
Professor Stefan Buczacki writes about wildlife every month in
Gardens Monthly magazine. He gained a first-class honours degree in botany at Southampton University, obtained a D.Phil. in forest science at Oxford and embarked on a career in research. In 1984 he began writing and broadcasting and has achieved numerous awards and distinctions as a naturalist. He is passionate about the British countryside and its fauna, and this is no more apparent than in his 50th book
Fauna Britannica, the result of four years' research. The book includes a foreward by HRH the Prince of Wales and is published by
Hamlyn.
Images supplied by David Chapman Wildlife Photography.
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