Wood Piles for Wildlife

We are making a start. During the winter months we have been creating new habitats for all sorts of wildlife in the Charlton Down Nature Area. It is part of our drive to increase biodiversity in this small nature space. Hopefully a greater the variety of habitat types, as well as incorporating more plant species, will provide more food and shelter for an increasing number of creatures – both large and small, vertebrate and invertebrate.

One of the things we have been doing is to increase the number of wood or log piles. There are already a couple of places where clippings from trees, or old timber have been loosely piled up under the trees. But now we are expanding on that as a deliberate policy. So far, these are unstructured heaps but we can soon make them more secure and varied. We were lucky enough to be given the logs from a rotten cherry tree that had been recently felled. Several recent storms have also brought down dead wood from large old trees in the vicinity. So it is easy to pick up odd bits of broken branches lying on the ground while walking to the nature area and to add these to the new wood piles.

The idea is to provide more homes, hiding places, breeding sites, and even food for a vast number of small creatures such as insects, bugs, worms, and micro-organisms as well as vertebrate wildlife like amphibians, mammals and birds. Creatures can find shelter in the spaces between the twigs, branches, logs, and leaves or even burrow into the wood. Burrowing becomes easier as the wood begins to break down. The dead wood gradually becomes colonised by fungi, lichens and mosses that add to the decay process; and additionally in themselves contribute to both the shelter and food available for exploitation for an even greater variety of animal species.

It will be fun in the future to monitor these new microhabitats and see what different types of organism they attract and protect.

Useful reading on how to build a wood pile refuge for wildlife.

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-to-make-a-log-pile-to-provide-shelter-for-garden-wildlife.html

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/how-make-log-shelter

https://www.rspb.org.uk/helping-nature/what-you-can-do/activities/create-a-log-pile-for-wildlife

https://www.rhs.org.uk/wildlife/dead-wood-compost-heap-habitats