Take a leaf out ofmyfriend’s books...

We do not need to be experts to observe what is constantly going on around us although a basic knowledge of what we are looking at always makes the experience more stimulating and enjoyable.

For example, if we see a flock of birds or even a single one in a garden shrub, it is much more interesting if we know what they are.

There is always the chance that we might be witnessing rare visitors.

It also helps if we can identify our trees, shrubs and flowers and recent figures have shown a worrying lack of knowledge within our population. Surprisingly high numbers – up to 80% according a recent survey conducted by the Woodland Trust – cannot distinguish an oak tree from an ash which means such people would not recognise diseases such as ash dieback.

Ten percent of those interviewed thought an oak leaf had come from a sycamore and only 17% could recognise an ash leaf. These are all very common trees.

Some time ago, I knew a woman who referred to all small birds (except robins) as sparrows yet visitors to her garden and bird table included greenfinches, goldfinches, dunnocks, house sparrows, tree sparrows and even tree-creepers and a nuthatch. She could recognise a robin because she had seen them on Christmas cards and could also identify male blackbirds but had difficulty distinguishing female or young blackbirds from thrushes.

There are ways of increasing one’s knowledge and ability to recognise wildlife in all its forms and the internet is a splendid example.

The information it contains is astonishing. Reference books are another very simple means of increasing one’s knowledge of wild birds, animals, trees and flowers. I knew one housebound woman whose life was transformed when someone presented her with a simple reference book from which she learned to identify the birds she could see from her living room window. Quite suddenly, she developed an understanding of what she was seeing and thrived with a new topic of conversation.

Apart from our gardens, there are many other locations that offer a variety of wildlife. A walk through a quiet wood will reveal many varieties – as a child, one of my regular walks took me through the local woodland where I saw green woodpeckers, nuthatches, jackdaws, rooks, umpteen species of smaller birds such as wrens, willow warblers and long tailed tits as well as a large variety of trees. I also found badger setts.

Here in the north we are blessed with acres of open moorland, wonderful rivers, a variety of farmland and countryside plus a superb coastline and some wonderful private properties that are open to the public. Such places provide homes for an incredible range of wild creatures ranging from deer to dormice, bats to buzzards, daffodils to dogwood, dragonflies to painted ladies and shepherd’s purse to traveller’s joy.

Some recent outings enjoyed by my wife and I include Harlow Carr Gardens near Harrogate where we noticed the variety of wild birds in the wooded areas and on their ponds – chiff-chaffs, chaffinches, coots, water hens, various ducks and others whilst a trip to Castle Howard’s Great Lake enabled us to see a flight of oyster catchers passing overhead and some delightful coot chicks with fluffy red heads.

There are cormorants here too along with great crested grebes, little grebes (known also as dabchicks), a variety of ducks and some very regal swans.

The RSPB reserve at Saltholme on Teesside is always worth a visit where experts are usually on hand to help you see and identify a huge range of water fowl and others birds, not to mention a fox that visits regularly.

There are many other lakes, gardens and stately homes where wildlife or interesting captives such as birds of prey can present a challenge of identification.

LAST year some wasps attempted to colonise one of our bird nest boxes and I did not realise until I noticed evidence of construction work poking out of the entrance hole which is small enough to admit only blue tits – and also wasps. But for some reason which I do not know they abandoned that project and this year, when I cleaned out our nest boxes, I removed all their incredibly complex paperwork. A family of blue tits then moved in and successfully produced a brood.

This year, however, the wasps returned and they have made use of another nest box. Thus for a time we had wasps and blue tits nesting almost side by side but I never noticed any disputes.

The question was whether to attempt the removal of the wasps or allow them to remain in the knowledge that in time there would be hundreds of them buzzing around our garage entrance, the site of that little box.

I decided to leave them because they do an enormous amount of good in the garden, killing small pests such as aphids, sawfly caterpillars and various insects.

They only become a nuisance to humans in the autumn when they start hunting sweet foods such as ripe fruit and jam. In that way, they can be a problem during picnics.

Their life cycle is fascinating.

In spring, the queens, fertilised in the previous year, seek bare wood on posts, old trees and even window frames, then chew it into a paste from which to construct their nests of paper. It was this activity that led to the invention of paper for our use. The queen lays her eggs which hatch into workers and drones.

There are seven species of wasp in this country, the most numerous being the common wasp that we see around our gardens in the autumn. This builds a paper nest, often in underground burrows left by small mammals.

The tree wasp also builds a paper nest in a cavity in a tree or wall and there is also a species known as the German wasp which constructs paper nests.

When the workers and drones hatch, they kill insects and caterpillars which they feed to the larvae, which in turn produce sweet saliva upon which the workers and drones feed.

In late summer and early autumn, when the queen stops laying more eggs, the workers and drones need to find food elsewhere – and so they raid orchards and gardens in their search for ripe fruit and other sweet things.

In late autumn, the workers and drones all die, and the fertilised queen then seeks somewhere cosy and dry to hibernate.

She may even use the folds of your curtains and although you might think she is a hornet due to her size, she will be no trouble.

Then next year she will find somewhere to start her paper production and the whole cycle starts again.