Nature Chain Winsley

  Dragonfly Giant eyes, hairy jaws, spiked feet – a monster with sophisticated design to kill, and terrifyingly efficient. Back in time... a lot of time... we would have been cowering, shooing it away... if we had been there. Happily, we were not. This most efficient of all    predators was big... in an era of giants. It was the Carboniferous Period, 320 million years ago. With all the dramatic changes through time since, the mega-giant T. rex went extinct, but our googly-eyed monster did not. It continues to patrol right now, above and below... but a miniature version. They are the most efficient predator of all predators which have been studied, with a higher success rate than killer whales or birds of prey. They are the damselflies   and dragonflies  Airborne, it is the beautiful flash of colour darting about your garden and pond in summer.   But right now, it is efficiently on the hunt below winter watery reflections. It waits in ambush an...

  Frogs Happy New Year to you & your nearby wildlife... and hopefully a better year in the wider world of our environment on which we depend. Clean pure air; clean pure water; fertile soil – aerated and rain retaining; a bountiful food larder of leaves, flowers, fruits, roots  and creatures visible and microscopic... all working together, recycling, upcycling, in a self-maintaining and intricately regulated system  what a gift! And with a free bonus – tried, tested and refined over time - millennia! Right now, this Winsley frog is hibernating – dormant, with slowed body processes so potentially vulnerable. Watery Wildlife Gardening Hints : Along with the toads, frogs are safe sheltering under your leaf piles, inside a compost heap  or a mammal’s old burrow. Cold-blooded so unable to control their body temperature, their temperature equals their surroundings so shelter from extreme cold is vital... and it must be damp too. Their skin is not waterproof ...