Look closely
Keep a look out for a wide variety of birds, mammals and insects. If you don’t spot them, you may well hear them or see the telltale signs that show they’ve recently been about.
Woodland wildlife
The surrounding woodland is rich in bird life. The trees and undergrowth make a perfect habitat for nesting and foraging for food.
Listen and look out for green, great and lesser spotted woodpeckers drumming as well as the noisy rooks. You might also hear a medley of birdsong from blackbirds, robins and threatened species such as the blackcap, song thrush and spotted flycatcher.
In warm weather you might be lucky to spot a white admiral butterfly. Much rarer than the red admiral, the white admiral is locally distributed and feeds on patches of nettles along the woodland boundary.
The woods are also home to badgers, muntjac and roe deer. It’s unlikely that you’ll see any of them as they are nocturnal creatures, but keep a look out for their footprints and animal dung which is a sure sign of their presence.
Water-loving wildlife
The ponds and lake at the bottom of the garden are tranquil spots for wildlife watching. They attract numerous types of birds that feed on the insects from the water.
In the warmer months swallows can be seen and sometimes hobbies flying low over the water. If you're really lucky, you might spot the flash of blue from a feeding kingfisher.
Coots, moorhens, mallards and Canadian geese frequently nest and bob about on the water. Dragonflies can be spotted darting around and colonies of the nationally scarce red-eyed damselfly have in the past bred in the banks of the lake.
Rural visitors
Upton is in the heart of rolling Warwickshire countryside which encourages wildlife into the garden including many mammals such as badgers, deer, mice, rabbits, shrews and voles.
Buzzards, kestrels, falcons, owls, yellowhammers, fieldfares, skylarks and redwings are some of the farmland birds that you might see at Upton.
The woodland, waterways and surrounding countryside all provide valuable habitats and feeding grounds for our long-eared, pipistrelle and serotine bats that are night-time visitors.
It’s not just the natural landscape that encourages wildlife into the gardens. The gardening team manages the gardens in a sensitive way to create ideal habitats for all types of wildlife.
