Enchanted Hour Wildlife

 The talk by Stewart Roberts at the Library yesterday was very well attended - extra chairs had to be brought out.  He had a great many slides to show, of a wide variety of birds, insects and small animals that could be found in his garden, and also of local fungi and other plants.

As an organic gardener, he has a bird feeder which attracts a variety of small birds which also eat insect pests in the garden - and the presence of the small birds also attracts birds of prey like sparrowhawks, which eat the small birds.  There was a good picture of a female sparrowhawk which was feasting on a pigeon she had just killed, outside the Doctors' Surgery.  "The pigeon was beyond medical help."

He also has a pond, where dragonflies and damsel flies breed.  He also had pictures of toads, frogs and newts, though not all of them came from his own garden.

He even had a picture from the Begwns of the damage badgers can cause to a lawn when they're digging for worms and other insects.

I've seen slowworms in various places around Hay (which are neither slow, nor worms - they're a type of legless lizard).  He talked about trying to encourage a local grave digger not to kill them, and it was all going well until the slowworm panicked and shed its tail in a bid to escape!  He has also seen grass snakes, though he hasn't seen the other native British snake, the adder, locally.

There are birds and butterflies that are summer migrants to the UK - swallows for instance coming all the way from Africa - and some slightly less welcome visitors like Asian hornets, which have not been seen locally yet, but are spreading across the UK because of the milder weather we have now.

It was a fascinating talk, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was filled with enthusiasm to get out more and see what wildlife I could find.  For those on Facebook, he posts his pictures regularly on the Hay Community page.

The next Enchanted Hour will be a talk by an author from New York who now lives locally, about Christmas children's books.  She's hoping to introduce a local audience to some American classics.