Hedges for wildlife

Today we hosted a 'hedges for wildlife' event - in aid of the Winkleigh community centre...




...But we were just the hosts. Many thanks to Tom Hynes, of the North Devon Coast and Countryside Service, who provided the expertise, and Maire Claude, Margery and Claire who did the catering.

About 20 people turned up - not crowds. But it made a good number at the hedge where Tom demonstrated how to steep hazel, cutting through the uprights and bending them over, but leaving a hinge to living wood to sustain next year's growth and fastening the whole thing with a crook.

So that's a start on the long hedge at the southern end of the nature reserve, There's so much left to do though. By the time we've done all our hedges they'll all be overgrown again...

DIY solar air heater update

We found a computer fan for the DIY solar air heater...



...thanks to Gareth and his computer shop in Barnstaple (01271 327627). Gareth doesn't like chucking stuff away any more than we do, and kindly gave us two fans. He repairs computers and sells reburbished ones - so maybe we'll be back to see him later. IT can be destinctly ungreen sometimes and the big suppliers aren't always great at their recycling.

Ian fitted the fan into some spare drain pipe, put the pipe and a back board on the contraption, mounted a 12v solar trickle charger we used to top up the electric fencing onto the front, and stood it facing the evening sun.

It worked a treat. Really impressively well. It was late afternoon, almost dappled shade, in mid October yet a hand to the end of the pipe detected a steady and surprisingly strong stream of warm air. Ian's Dad says he has a pair of heat probes
hanging around from when he did energy saving consultancy work (back in the 80s!) so we hope to get some proper figures.

Next decision - how to weather proof it and where to put it...

Blog action day - climate change

You can make a difference - but switching off your phone charger won't do it...

This year's Blog action day is focussing on Climate Change - so here's a couple of thoughts.

You know those stats about unplugging your phone, switching things off at the wall etc? Well the other day I figured out that if I unplugged the washing machine at the wall when not using it, it would save me ooooh... £1.65 a year, roughly (I'm monitoring our business energy use closely these days!).

Not a lot then. Not much hope of getting people across the country as a whole to take that sort of thing seriously either.

But how many homes are there in Britain with washing machines? Must be more than 10 million. Twenty million maybe? So £33 million pounds worth of electricity going on standby a year - and that's just washing machines?

Hmmm. Maybe government should pass some laws about more efficient domestic appliances.

But if you think that's a lot of money for little red lights in the country's utility rooms, think about it a different way. The following is from Sustainable Energy without the hot air by respected academic David MacKay:

“The mobile phone charger averages around ... 1W consumption, but if every one of the country’s 25 million mobile phones chargers were left plugged in and switched on they would consume enough electricity (219GWh) to power 66 000 homes for one year.”

66 000? Wow, what a lot of homes! Switch off the chargers! ...... but 66 000 is just one quarter of one percent of 25 million. So... if you leave your mobile phone charger plugged in, it uses one quarter of one percent of your home’s electricity.
And if everyone does it?

If everyone leaves their mobile phone charger plugged in, those chargers will use one quarter of one percent of their homes’ electricity.

The “if-everyone” multiplying machine is a bad thing because it deflects people’s attention towards 25million minnows instead of 25million sharks.
The mantra “Little changes can make a big difference” is bunkum, when applied to climate change and power.... We all use power. So to achieve a “big difference” in total power consumption, you need almost everyone to make a “big” difference to their own power consumption.

Oh dear - that's depressing. What to do then? Well, maybe a big change is tricky all at once, but you genuinely can make a difference.

Already turned down your thermostat by 1 degree? Cut down on those unnecessary journeys? Buying your kids good quality second hand toys?

Here's another easy one, and you don't even have to do without anything.

Eat your way to a better planet. Start by eating less energy intensive highly-processed and highly-packaged food-mile laden grub. The average Brit throws away 400g a day of packaging - mostly food packaging. The energy footprint of that is about 4 kWh/d/person.

And don't throw food in the bin - give it away. Or freeze it, or serve it up differently with curry sauce, or whatever - as a last resort, compost it, or get yourself a cheap plastic biodigester that can take cooked food waste (some councils are subsidising them to around £10 a cone). You'll save money.

And if everyone did it we'll save on the lorry coming to take the rubbish, save on the landfill sites that have to be dug, save on the pest control, the .... Oh no, I'm getting carried away with the big number multipliers again.

Look - I reckon it's pretty simply. We all have to make a BIG effort to USE LESS - of everything. That's a good start at least.

And vote for a government that will help us collectively do the smaller things too.

Dormice getting ready for a Devon winter

I've been out with Jan again for some more dormouse training. It was one of those beautiful autumn days you have to store up against grey November. And this time we found lots of dormice in their nest boxes, getting ready for winter...




They looked distinctly fatter than last time.

One dormouse heard us coming. As we approached the box a golden head poked out of the opening hole. While I dithered, not wanting to bop it on the nose with the paddle used to close the box while it's being checked, the dormouse nipped out and headed up the tree. Ah well - we at least ascertained there was a healthy dormouse in that box, even if we couldn't weigh or sex it.

And it sat still for some photos. They're not brilliant - I had to rest the camera on a tree to keep it still enough for a non-flash pic, and that constrained the angle. But it's the best dormouse picture I have from the natural environment...



Meanwhile, my Dad says he's made another 15 or so dormouse boxes, so come next spring I should be ready to put them up and join the National Dormouse Monitoring scheme. Jan says I'm about ready for a licence, but I need to find another referee, and anyway I'd like a bit more experience checking boxes at other times of the year - for example when young dormice are likely to be there.