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Birdsong in Balham

April 15, 2022 by beautifybalham

As International Dawn Chorus Day approaches, on Sunday May 1st, this article reflects on some of the birds that may enliven our environment in Balham.

Sparrow

Spring is the time when birdsong reaches its peak, though some of our resident species have already been singing for months – Song Thrushes started to sing in December, and Robins sing all year round – particularly if they have a street light in their territory. Light is one of the key factors that triggers birds to sing, and Robins are especially susceptible to the effect of artificial light sources.

Song Thrush
Robin

I lead occasional walks for the Friends of Wandsworth Common, looking at and listening to, the birds on the Common. One of the questions that I am asked most frequently is how to identify birds by their songs and calls. There’s no easy answer to this, as an individual’s experience of birdsong is very subjective: one person’s tuneful melody is another person’s raucous squawking. And different individual birds do sing differently – some species will try to impress their prospective partners by incorporating copies of other birds’ songs, or noises that they hear from their environment. Starlings are extremely good at imitating other sounds, and can successfully copy ringtones, car alarms and other noises in their chattering songs. The buildings on the corners opposite Waitrose are a good place to hear them!

Starling

Other birds that can be heard locally include the Wren – a little bird with a big voice, that fires off like a machine gun–and the outwardly unassuming Dunnock (whose private lives are extremely racy), with a song sounding like a shopping trolley with a squeaky wheel. To me, a Robin’s song does tend to validate Michael Jackson’s ornithological masterwork, Rockin’ Robin (does anyone remember the original version by Bobby Day?), in singing “Twiddley dee, twiddley diddley dee”, while the Song Thrush does indeed tend to sing each song twice (or, indeed, three times) over, as Robert Browning noted while thinking abroad. Interestingly, urban Blackbirds are now tending to follow Paul McCartney’s observation in singing in the dead of night – a relatively recent development, possibly reflecting the need to find a quiet time to sing when they are more likely to be heard, rather than compete with daytime traffic noise. Typically, birdsong reaches its peak in the hour or so before and after dawn, and keen birders may be up at 4 a.m. on Dawn Chorus day to appreciate the volume of birdsong as it develops to its peak. But an alternative is just to open a window and hear what’s going on.

Wren
Dunnock
Blackbird

In order to enjoy birdsong, one doesn’t need to identify which bird is making the sound. Birdsong has been around, it’s thought, for about fifty million years! Birdsong has been here for much longer than humans, and it is believed to have originated in Australia. Birdsong has been shown by various studies to have relaxing properties for the human listener and to have potential benefits for our mental health. Various theories have been put forward to explain this – one is that, if birds were singing it meant that they didn’t perceive a threat, and this enabled our ancestors to feel a bit more relaxed! Who knows whether that’s right, but in any case it is worth taking a moment or two to listen and enjoy.

Article by Nick Rutter, Wandsworth Common Bird Walk Guide and a Friend of Wandsworth Common

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Filed Under: Birds, Nature Tagged With: Birds, Birdsong, Robins, Sparrows, Starlings

Living Pillars in Balham

March 29, 2022 by beautifybalham

‘Living Pillars’ are making their appearance around London but you may be asking yourself, what are they exactly?

Living Pillar™ Spring Foxlgloves – image provided by Scotscape

Many of you may have heard of ‘Living Walls’. They are often found in urban environments on the sides of houses, hotels, office buildings, and are walls covered with plants. Living walls have numerous benefits – not only do they improve the air quality by trapping pollution at street level, but they also increase biodiversity. Cities by their nature are covered in concrete, which traps heat and exacerbates increases in temperature. Living walls mitigate this heat by removing solar radiation, and make for a cooler & more comfortable urban environment.

Orchard Lisle Living Wall for Team London Bridge – image provided by Scotscape

Finding walls to accommodate a living wall can be hard to come by, but Living Pillars aim to make this concept easier to implement. The company Scotscape Limited is behind the brilliant engineering idea of the LivingPillar™. The wall of plants is wrapped around a lamp post rather than a wall and, although smaller in square meterage, has the same advantages as a living wall. The living pillars increase biodiversity and provide living corridors within cities. Furthermore these living pillars trap fine particles and mitigate air pollution. They help make our cities greener, which is known to benefit mental health and general well-being.

Smart Living Pillar CuPhosco – image provided by Scotscape

As you can see, Living Pillars are a wonderful addition to our cities, and we are thrilled to have two about to be installed in Balham on Bedford Hill! You can see more of Scotscape’s work through their website here.

Have you seen any Living Walls or Living Pillars recently? Send us your photos of your favourite Living Pillars through the hashtag: #BeautifyBalham.

– Justine and the Beautify Balham Team

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Filed Under: Beautify Balham, Community, Living Pillars Tagged With: Community, Living Pillars, Living Walls, Plants

Summer Flowering Bulbs and Annual Seeds

March 2, 2022 by beautifybalham

March is the harbinger of spring.

We notice signs of life in our flower beds, tree pits and on the commons. Snowdrops first (see some beautiful examples of snowdrops growing in RHS Gardens here), then winter aconites, anemones, celandines, daffodils, crocuses, bluebells, and finally the tulips. But if, like me, you enjoy a successful spring garden before it all goes rather quiet, you may need some help on how to bridge this next season into summer (as I often do)!

Snowdrops
Echinops
Hydrangea

The answer is to plant summer flowering bulbs, and also the very versatile and
economical annuals sown as seeds. Make the most of what you have. As Clare Gogerty writes in the Observer Gardening Special, ‘Limited outside space needn‘t stop you growing an impressive display of flowers and edibles’, so think creative and get growing!

Summer bulbs such as agapanthus, begonias, gladioli, dahlias, crocosmia, lilies and ranunculus all put on a good show. Most of them enjoy the sun at some part of the day, but they can be planted in pots to move around the garden, or placed on a balcony.

Daylilies
Tiger Lilies
Lilium Casa Blanca

As Balham in Bloom takes place in late June, here are some other tips to get your
gardens, hanging baskets and window boxes blooming in time for the event:

Sow some wildflower seeds – which are readily available online or in garden centres. Seeds that are easy, and which children will enjoy planting, are candy tuft, nasturtium, marigolds and cosmos. These can grow quite tall, so allow room if they are in open ground. Love-in-the
mist (Nigella) and poppies are easy too, and give a great splash of colour just when you need it. Seed catalogues are in abundance now, and can be found in the local shops in Balham and Tooting: Poundshops, Wilkos, Lidl and Aldi. They all stock seeds that are cheap and easy to grow. You can also read about some more unusual seeds in Capital Gardens’ latest blog post (and visit them at Neal’s Nurseries)!

Window boxes sown with wildflower seeds!
Cosmos with a bee!
Cosmos with a bee!
Echinacea

Vegetable seeds are also readily available, and exciting too – including runner and
dwarf beans, courgettes, radishes, lettuces, ‘cut and come again’ salad
leaves, spring onions, tomatoes and chillies. Planted together with flowering plants they make a really good show, and are edible as a bonus! SimplySeed.co.uk has a great selection of vegetable seeds available.

Chillies
Tomatoes

So, get the soil ready by digging over, add extra compost (peat-free!) and some gravel for drainage if you can. Sow according to the instructions on the packet and wait. Keep watered if dry, and place on a sunny window sill to start them off or in a propagator if you have one. Label them or get the children to make their own labels and decorate them (wooden lolly sticks and plant labels are better than plastic)! Try to recycle old plant pots rather than buying new ones, or use empty containers that you are throwing out with a few drainage holes in the base. Enjoy being creative and foster the love of gardening with your children so they will grow up respecting nature and know how their food is grown.

Get kids involved
Start planting
Dahlia
Enjoy the colourful results!

Once you’ve cultivated some beautiful plants, enter Balham in Bloom 2022 with your front gardens, communal gardens, window boxes or hanging baskets! Last entries are on Sunday 29th May, for the presentation which takes place on Saturday 25th June. You can visit https://beautifybalham.org/balham-in-bloom/ for more information. It’s free to enter!
Please send any queries to hello@beautifybalham.org and we will be happy to answer them.

– Jean Millar and the Beautify Balham Team

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Filed Under: Beautify Balham, Gardening Tagged With: Bulbs, Daffodils, Flowers, Hyacinths, Planting, Poppies, Seeds, Snowdrops, Tulips

Hedge Fun

February 21, 2022 by beautifybalham

So many of the lovely Victorian houses in Balham are being returned to a modern-day version of their former glory, undergoing a whole host of restorations and improvements.

We are usually asked to restore the downtrodden (and often dug up) front gardens, something we do with great enthusiasm, skill and pride: new mosaic paths, Yorkstone porch steps, low brick walls, railings and gates – all beautifully proportioned and a fitting welcome
into the lovely living space beyond. Perhaps the biggest concession to modern times, though, is the paving that usually goes in front of the bay window. ‘Low maintenance, please’ is the main reason here, coupled with today’s added hassles of dustbins, wheelie bins and ‘somewhere to put the bikes’.

This all looks great but often, in my view, lacks a softness that is easily remedied with some planting. Furthermore all paving is proven to exacerbate flooding in urban environments. There are many, many options here including pots, shrubs, ‘lollipop’ bay trees, formal parterres (if you’ve got the space), specimen trees and loads more.

My top recommendation, though, is the much maligned and massively underrated hedge. Don’t be put off by the woody and overbearing privet relics of the past. A new evergreen hedge, like Yew, Bay, Privet or Lonicera will serve you in so many ways. Situated in the traditional strip just behind the low front wall, they bring softening greenery to your front garden combined with a high degree of privacy from passers-by.

But hedges are so much more than just a lush screen. They soak up excess surface water after rainfall and masses of greenhouse carbon dioxide at night-time. Better still, research has shown that they absorb traffic noise and traffic pollution, filtering many of the harmful particulates from exhaust fumes. More hedges make for much cleaner air at home and in
the wider community.

And the low maintenance? Well, a haircut once a year, two at the most, is all they need. And if that doesn’t represent a great investment, I don’t know what does.

Chris Martin, of The London Front Garden Company Ltd

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Filed Under: Beautify Balham, Gardening, Hedges Tagged With: Gardening, Hedges

The Bin Bag Challenge

February 16, 2022 by beautifybalham

May I ask you a delicate question?
How many bin bags do you put out your front door each week?

The Bin Bag Challenge

A walk around the neighbourhood on collection day suggests an average of 4 bags per
household. That amounts to 1.1kg of household waste … per person in the UK … per day!
Our waste is palpable evidence of our consumption: food leftovers, food waste, plastic bags and wraps, food containers, cleaning product packaging, single-use wipes and pads, broken toys, old clothes or simply unused clothes, etc.

Behind this visible part of the iceberg also lies the less visible waste generated during the production and transportation of all these items. We’ve all read about how our consumption has sky-rocketed over the past 5 decades and how it is impacting our planet. Time to act!

Yes, of course, time to act. But it is also time to send a report to the boss, to take the kids to school, the keep the house in order, and place food on the table. If there is time left, we would rather spend it on some fun and relaxing time.

This is where the Bin Bag Challenge comes in handy. It is about having a drink with friends who also want to reduce their waste, exchanging tips and celebrating smaller bin bags. There are no costs involved, just help and support.

How does it work exactly?

You join a group of friendly people and receive weekly challenges through WhatsApp on topics like ‘Cleaning’, ‘Beauty’ and ‘Food’. Group members share their experience, ideas and tips to meet the challenge. They support each other and meet to celebrate.
No shaming, no judging – just support.
A user-friendly website also provides information, DIY recipes and addresses of Wandsworth-based and online shops to help with the challenge & to drive down waste.

We tested the solutions ourselves, so can guarantee that it is for “normal” people – there is no need to be a zero-waste guru! Previous groups have reported impressive results – such as going from 4 to 2 bags a week, over 9 weeks. Several participants even went on to create their own group straight after their first iteration of the program, to keep cutting down their waste and to help others do so. You can see how this scheme can make a huge difference!

Make friends. Be proud. Take action against climate change.
Join the Bin Bag Challenge today!

You can find more information here – www.binbagchallenge.com – and you can get in touch through the Contact Us page.

To get you started: you can see our blog post on The Benefits of Composting here to reduce your bags of waste before they start adding up (and smelling foul)!

Are you interested in joining in? Have you just started the Bin Bag Challenge yourself? Let us know how you get on using social media with the hashtag: #BeautifyBalham.
Good luck!

Alice & Catherine, and The Beautify Balham Team

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Filed Under: Beautify Balham, Waste Tagged With: Bin Bags, Food Waste, Litter

Feed the Birds

February 10, 2022 by beautifybalham

A wren spotted locally

Barbara is one of the guides who leads bird-walks on Wandsworth Common. For more details see the Friends of Wandsworth Common website.

Gardens are an important habitat for wildlife and even a small urban garden can attract a variety of birds and give hours of pleasure as you get to know your regular visitors. Engaging with nature is good for mental well-being and you can even contribute to citizen science by reporting your sightings to BTO’s Garden Bird Watch and RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch on the last weekend of January.

Providing feeders helps supplement the natural food supply. Sunflower Hearts and Fat Balls are favourites with a range of birds. I regularly see House Sparrows, Starlings, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits and Goldfinches on my feeders, with Robins, Dunnocks, Blackbirds, Magpies and Wood Pigeons foraging for the food dropped onto the ground underneath. Even if you don’t have a garden you can try a window feeder and watch the birds from the comfort of your armchair.

Wren

Position feeders in the open, but close to a shrub or tree where birds can perch to wait their turn and retreat to safety if they feel threatened. Feeders with a cage surround can help deter squirrels and larger birds, although the Wood Pigeons and Magpies have become adept at balancing on my window feeder! To reduce the spread of disease, feeders should be washed regularly, and mouldy food discarded. Equally important is water – both for drinking and bathing – but ensure you add a few stones so that any insects or small mammals which fall in can escape. Birds can take a little while to get used to change so be patient: sit back and wait for them to come.

Article by Barbara Littlechild, Wandsworth Common Bird Walk Guide and a Friend of Wandsworth Common

If you want to write to us and have your own blog post & thoughts placed on this website to help others, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page!

Filed Under: Beautify Balham Tagged With: Bird feeding, Birds

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