Hugh’s views: Helping nature
Over the last year or so nature has taken a bit of a battering in Amble. New housing developments continue to reduce the bio-diversity at both ends of the town and one in particular has obliterated a huge amount of plant life in a very sensitive area at Braid Hill.
📷 Great tit. Photo Hugh Tindle
The loss of such a large green space so close to the river feels like a lost opportunity to protect and encourage nature in Amble.
However, the overall picture is perhaps not quite as bleak as it might at first seem. There are two projects in Amble which could have a very positive effect on nature in Amble.
The Amble Youth Project has taken on a double allotment at the Percy Drive site and is already making great strides in clearing the site and preparing it for gardening projects. The project will include the development of a wildlife area as well as providing an opportunity to acquire a variety of horticultural skills.
Approximately forty people have also expressed an interest in helping to create a community garden beside the Amble Library in Middleton Street. The project hopes to encourage nature as well as creating an area appealing to people as well.
For my own part I have recently installed a couple of nestboxes at the allotment that I took on last April. I have noticed a number of common garden birds which are present at different times of the year. So towards the end of February I placed a box for small hole nesters such as blue and great tits in a quiet corner. It was attached to a dead branch which I had kept to one side for such a purpose.
The second box which has a half open front and is suitable for either a wren or a robin has been placed inside a very rustic store shed where it will be safe from the predatory magpies, jackdaws and carrion crows which also inhabit the allotment area but where it can still be accessed safely through several gaps on all sides of the shed.
Nature has a way of trying to adapt to whatever obstacles we put in its way and usually responds positively to any help it receives. Placing a few nestboxes, bug hotels or simple water features in places where previously there were none could help to support the remaining wildlife of Amble.
Hugh Tindle
