Reptile rockery

Each month Springwatch have a Wildlife SOS (Save Our Species), which encourages everybody to do something specific to help our wildlife. This month it was to build a reptile rockery. When Little Brother had to do a project on 'habitats' for his homework, we decided building a reptile rockery in our wildlife garden would be perfect.

As reptiles are cold-blooded, they need somewhere sunny to bask and warm up, as well as somewhere shady to hide when it's too hot or when there are predators nearby. We raided Nanny Moth's garden and found a mixture of flat stones, broken pots and pieces of concrete (all flattish and warm in the sunshine), which we arranged with plenty of gaps as hidey holes. Then we planted some herbs around the edge, to provide extra shade and to attract insects for our reptiles to eat.

The reptile rockery is in a sunny spot near our new pond, so it will also be a great place for frogs and toads to hide. No sign of any basking reptiles yet, so we helped with a few from the toy box!

And the furry anaconda needed wrestling!

Homework done and Wildlife SOS done!

He wrote up a little bit about reptiles and the habitat they need for his homework

I'm not sure we have any reptiles in our garden yet, but maybe this will help some to live there. Wouldn't it be great to have a resident slow worm or grass snake one day!