Beneficial Insect Box - overwintering for ladybirds, lacewings etc.

As the days grow shorter and cooler, many animals are beginning to look for a safe place to spend the winter.

The best way to cater for most hibernating animals is simply not to tidy your garden too much – a pile of leaves at the back of a flower bed provides a great place for many insects as well as some larger animals (including hedgehogs) to bed down for the winter. However, if you would like to go a step further and provide the animals in your garden with tailor-made winter homes then NHBS can help. For insects, including many important pollinators, predators of garden pests, and species that are important food items for bats, frogs, and many small mammals, NHBS offers a range of nesting and overwintering boxes.

Hedgehog Hibernation Box

For popular garden visitors like hedgehogs, and amphibians such as frogs and toads please visit our amphibian and mammal nest box pages.

Bat populations have fallen dramatically in recent decades and one reason for this is the loss of suitable hibernation sites (or hibernacula). NHBS offers a wide range of tailor-made bat hibernation boxes including wooden boxes such as the Double Chamber Bat Box - and the new Triple Chamber Bat Box which we introduced last week here - as well as more durable woodcrete colony hibernation boxes such as the Schwegler 1FW.

Small Bird Nest Box

Finally, spare a thought for those birds that do not migrate south to warmer areas. Although most of us only consider bird boxes as being useful during the summer in fact they are frequently used by roosting birds during the long cold winter nights. Putting bird boxes up in the autumn gives birds plenty of time to find them and increases the chances that your box will be used next spring.

Read our guide to choosing the right nest box for birds

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The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles

Following the success of 2003′s Whose Bird? Men and Women Commemorated in the Common Names of Birds, and 2009′s Eponym Dictionary of Mammals, authors of the first two books Bo Boelens (AKA the fatbirder) and Michael Watkins, and joint third author of ‘Mammals’ Michael Grayson, have returned with this unmissable herpetological hoard.

The book is arranged by historical figure, under which are listed the reptiles named after that person, followed by a potted biography.

Here are three entries from the Dictionary:

Darwin

Darwin’s Ringed Lizard Amphisbaena darwini Duméril & Bibron, 1839

Darwin’s Iguana Diplolaemus darwinii Bell, 1843

Darwin’s Tree Iguana Liolaemus darwinii Bell, 1843

Darwin’s Gecko Gymnodactylus darwini Gray, 1845

Darwin’s Marked Gecko Homonota darwinii Boulenger, 1885

Darwin’s Sea Snake Hydrelaps darwiniensis Boulenger, 1896

Darwin’s Leaf-toed Gecko Phyllodactylus darwini Taylor, 1942

Darwin’s Ground Skink Glaphyromorphus darwiniensis Storr, 1967

Darwin’s Wall Gecko Tarentola darwini Joger, 1984

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was the prime advocate, to­gether with Wallace, of Natural Selection as the way in which speciation occurs. To quote from his most famous work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), “I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.” Darwin was the naturalist on ‘HMS Beagle’ on her scientific expedition round the world (1831-1836). In South America he found fossils of extinct animals that were similar to extant species. On the Galapagos Islands he notic­ed many variations among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America. On his return to London he conducted research on his notes and specimens. Out of this study grew several related theories; evolution did occur; evolutionary change was gradual, taking thousands or even millions of years; the primary mechanism for evolution was a process called Natural Selection; and the millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called ‘speciation’. Four mammals, three amphibians and several birds (including those famous finches) are named after him.

Ridley

Olive Ridley Turtle Lepidochelys olivacea Eschscholtz, 1829

Pernambuco Teiid Stenolepis ridleyi Boulenger, 1887

Ridley’s Worm Lizard Amphisbaena ridleyi Boulenger, 1890

Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855-1956) was a British botanist and collector on the island of Fernando de Noronha (1887), when he first reported the sightings of Olive Ridley Turtles in Brazil. However, it seems unlikely that the ‘Ridley’ in the turtle’s name refers to him. There are several theories including one that states that it was a ‘riddle’ where they came from and ‘riddle’ became pronounced ‘riddlie’ and so ‘ridley’. Ridley was known as ‘Mad Ridley’ or ‘Rubber Ridley’, as he was keen to get the rubber tree transplanted to British territory. He was Superintendent, Tropical Gardens, Singapore (1888-1912), where early experiments in growing the tree outside Brazil took place. He wrote The habits of Malay reptiles (1889). Two mammals and a bird are named after him.

Russell, P

Russell’s Viper Daboia russelii Shaw, 1797

Russell’s Sand Boa Eryx conicus Schneider, 1801

[Alt. Rough-scaled Sand Boa; Syn. Gongylophis conicus]

Russell’s Kukri Snake Oligodon taeniolatus Jerdon, 1853

[Alt. Streaked Kukri Snake]

Dr Patrick Russell (1726-1805) was a British surgeon and naturalist. He first went to India (1781) to look after his brother who was employed by the Honourable East India Company in Vizagapatnam. He became fascinated by the plants in the region and was appointed to be the Company’s Botanist and Naturalist, Madras Presidency (1785). He spent 6 years in Madras (Chennai) and sent a large collection of snakes to the British Museum (1791). One of his major concerns was snakebite and he tried to find a way for people to identify poisonous snakes, without first getting bitten and seeing what happened! The sand boa has his name attached to it because it appears to mimic Russell’s Viper: something he commented on in his A continuation of an account of Indian Serpents (1801).

The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles is published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and is due to be published on the 24th September 2011

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With wildlife conservation high on everyone’s agenda, here are some recommendations to introduce you to the natural diversity of your garden, and help you to create a haven for wildlife on your doorstep:

Guide to Garden Wildlife, by Richard Lewington, is a field guide to all the wildlife you might expect to encounter in the garden – from mammals, birds and insects to invertebrates and pond life. The species descriptions are full of useful detail, and Lewington provides the intricate illustrations that make this a real treasure of a handbook. There are informative sections on garden ecology, nest-boxes and bird feeders, and creating a garden pond.

Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and Other Beneficial Insects, by Jan Miller-Klein, homes in on practical techniques for encouraging insect diversity in your garden. A large-format tour through the seasons, with additional sections on tailored habitats, and species-appropriate planting, this beautifully photographed guide is perfect for every bug-friendly gardener looking to provide a good home for the full range of insect life.

RSPB Gardening for Wildlife: A Complete Guide to Nature-friendly Gardening, by Adrian Thomas, is a fantastic encyclopaedic introduction to how best to provide for the potential visitors to your garden, while maintaining its function for the family. A species-by-species guide to the ‘home needs’ of mammals, birds, insects and reptiles is followed by a substantial selection of practical projects, and helpful hints and appendices, to get your garden flourishing – whatever its size.

Dr Jennifer Owen’s Wildlife of a Garden: A Thirty-year Study, is a rare and illuminating book, in which is recorded – in scrupulous detail – the evidence of dramatic changes in populations in a single suburban garden in Leicester over a thirty-year period. An abundance of beautifully presented data, discussed in the context of wider biodiversity fluctuations, is balanced with numerous colour photographs, illustrations, and descriptive natural history of the residents of the garden. Modest in one sense, but unbelievably grand in timescale – and in its completeness – the rigorous effort and expertise that have been applied to the task of collecting and interpreting these data make this study a real one-off in the field of natural history writing.

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You will not have too much trouble spotting the new background image on The Hoopoe… these stunning eyes belong to the Red Eyed Tree Frog Agalychnis callidryas.

These beautiful frogs inhabit humid lowland and premontane forests distributed from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to Panama, including Costa Rica, where this photograph was taken by Carey James Balboa.

NHBS Country Guide to Costa Rica

Costa Rica is the focus of today’s NHBS Country Guide – the latest books on the wildlife of Costa Rica.

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