How we can help songbirds this winter

Written by: Georgia Dossis

I’ve grown up to see my mum treat her garden like a small arboretum and get really excited about her little sparrows that come and eat at the fat balls that she puts out, but I didn’t think anything other than it’s a bit of wildlife in the back garden.

Songbirds actually help to keep the balance between plants, herbivores, predators, and prey by dispersing seeds. They also react quickly to changes in in environment and have been proven to act as early warning signs for extreme weather conditions, from tracking their migration patterns.

Scientists are looking at the gaps within their knowledge about the effects of climate change and are finding that more than half of the UK’s songbirds are threatened or already in decline. Their research is ongoing but, in the meantime, there are ways that we can help them, especially during the winter months where their habitat becomes a lot harder for them to survive.

Feeding:

You don’t need a fancy bird feeder to feed birds (unless you want one). Easy and ecofriendly alternatives to this are using either a round clean bin lid or upcycling a plastic bottle into a bird feeder. This can even become a fun activity with the kids or family.

Seeds and fat balls are popular amongst all birds, you can also use leftovers such as fruit cake or mince pies, dried fruit, unsalted nuts, or apples and pears that are past their best.

Placing some seed or a fat ball under bushes / around any tree’s you may have for any of the shy birds out there.

Keeping bird feeders out of reach of pets.

If you don’t have a garden that you can do this in, hanging baskets or a bird feeder outside your window can still be a great way to feed birds in your area, it also adds to a lovely view.

Drinking water/ Bathing:

There are again smaller ways that you can provide water for birds without needing a bird bath. For example, a bowl of water, making sure that it’s as full as it can be to ensure that it doesn’t freeze/ it takes longer to freeze, or making sure that the bowl has a dark surface to keep heat in as much as possible.

If you do have a bird bath (the same as with feeders) ensure that they are clean when you can. Refrain from putting any salts/ detergents in as this can be poisonous to birds. But making sure that it is hygienic so that it is free from bacteria as much as possible.

Housing:

Birds often use artificial bird boxes during the summer and spring to rear their young and stay safe. During the winter months birds use these as warm and shelter from bad weathers. If you don’t have a bird box you can always make one as an arts and crafts afternoon, either out of recycled material or unused woods. Also making sure that you don’t add a perch as this can encourage predators.

Don’t rush to cut back on your gardening too. If there’s no bird box, birds will often use hedges, holes in trees or crannies in rocks to build their nests for the winter.

There are so many more ways to help birds during the winter, the above are the most minimal things that you can do to help from home. It’s all about keeping up to date with conservation issues and acting on this where we can to maintain and potentially grow our ecosystem.

Managing and reducing stress

Written by: Georgia Dossis

Stress serves the purpose of reacting and avoiding danger, which is great but too much can have a negative effect on you. Life is full of major and minor challenges and it’s completely normal to sometimes feel inundated with these issues.

According to Champion Health, one in 14 UK adults feel stressed daily and I guarantee if you ask your neighbour, your work colleague, a friend, or a family how they are, at least one of them will use the word ‘stress’ in their response.

Below are some suggestions on how to relieve and control symptoms when everything is getting a little bit too much:

-          Leave work at work. With the most common cause of stress being work related, I think one of the most important things is to leave work at work. I’m aware that not all job roles have this perk, but where you can you most definitely should leave work at the office. You psychologically associate your surrounding with your feelings. If you’re taking your work home you’re more likely to feel stress in your home and find it more difficult to switch off when you need to.

-          Be active. I can guarantee that this is the first thing you hear when you say that you’re stressed, and it often is the first question too “are you getting any exercise?” but they aren’t wrong. Exercise increases endorphins, which numbs pain receptors, allowing you to feel better and happier. Even if it’s a walk around your estate, getting movement in will reduce your stresses.

-          Take some time for you. Work holidays are given to be used. It would be unhealthy to work every single day of the year, no matter how much someone loves their job. Taking time off to catch up on you is not a bad thing. You can use this to get some of the life admin that you put off during the week done, take a holiday or even take a day to put your feet up.

-          Getting organised. By getting organised, you instantly feel better about the tasks that you need to do. Creating a to do list helps by having everything out of your mind, alongside being able to visually see what you’ve got to do.

-          Breathing and meditating. There are hundreds of apps and thousands of YouTube tutorials that can help with this. By focusing your attention on breathing it clears your mind of all the tangled thoughts. Meditating not only strengthens areas of your brain responsible for learning, attention and memory but also helps calm down your sympathetic nervous system. This improves your heart rate by slowing it down and causes you to feel more relaxed.

-          Activities. Whether it be apple picking, going shopping or using an adult colouring book, doing something you enjoy will allow you to take your mind away from what you’re focussing on that’s causing you stress. Colouring or reading for example help relax the fear centre of your brain which is what cause you to become calm.

-          Keep a journal. Journalling can allow you a safe space to express how you feel without fear of judgement. Here you don’t have to worry about grammar, punctuation, or spelling, just write whatever comes to mind.

-          Healthy Diet. There’s nothing more tempting when your stressed to eat badly, which is normal, and variety is good. But a healthy diet is key to keeping your body regulated and happy. We’ve all heard the term ‘hangry’, eating good healthy foods will help eliminate the ‘angry’ part.

Although stress is unavoidable it is definitely controllable, you just need to find what is right for you. Keeping stress at a manageable level is key to your overall well-being.

Why we should be composting

Written by: Georgia Dossis

By now you’ll have seen all the headlines and David Attenborough documentaries that hit us with the hard truths about becoming carbon neutral before 2030. There are so many ways to do this, whether it be using green energy to power your house, recycling, cutting down on your journeys in the car or even driving an electric vehicle, the list is endless.

But one really easy way in which we can reduce our carbon footprint is composting.

Composting is the natural process of recycling organic matter, such as food waste, teabags, leaves and food peelings.

What we don’t think about is that when you throw food waste away it ends up in landfills. Every 100 pounds of food waste that goes into landfills produces 8.3 pounds of methane, which in turn releases methane into the atmosphere trapping in heat and contributing to global warming.

This makes up for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. It’s said that if every household in the UK composted their food waste rather than throwing it away it would have the same effect on greenhouse gases as planting 640,000 trees.

I won’t lie when I hear composting, I hear green thumb, gardener, or farmer. But you can do this in every environment whether you have a big garden, small garden, farm, yard or flat. Little kitchen compost bins are easily attainable and easy to use to turn your food to mulch and if you don’t have an arboretum to use this on, you can share it with neighbor’s or local farms through app’s like ShareWaste, which find people around you that you can give your compost to so that they can use it for fertilizer.

Whether you keep the little bin in the kitchen or outside is completely at your discretion but for such an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint, it’s definitely worth thinking about!

A Crummy Guide to CQC's New Guidelines

Written by: Georgia Dossis

In a bid to make the process easier for surgeries as well as fit into new guidelines, CQC have decided to change part of their framework on how they will begin assessing care providers going forward.

So far, they’ve explained that their five statements Safe, Caring, Responsive, Effective, and Well-led (SCREW) domains are staying, along with their four-point rating scale (Outstanding, Good, Require Improvement and Adequate).

However, they will replace their Key Lines of Enquiry, prompts and rating characteristics with new ‘quality statements’ to reduce duplicates in the four-assessment area’s and make it essentially easier for providers to follow.

To make their judgement consistent, their new framework includes the below six categories for the evidence that they will collect:

• people’s experiences
• feedback from staff and leaders
• observations of care
• feedback from partners
• processes
• outcomes of care.

The way that they will use their new framework, is that they will continue to use inspections via site visits so that they can get evidence to assess quality, use a range of information to assess providers flexibly and frequently (this is not tied to a previous rating) and produce shorter and simpler reports showing the most up to date assessment.

Which going forward means that providers can be clearer on what is expected of them from the assessments, the reports will be simpler to read and all in all will result in better quality patient care.

Lionesses have brought it home!

Written by: Georgia Dossis

I’m sure that everyone can agree that history was well and truly made last night in the most spectacular way!

Not only was the 2-1 win from the Lionesses their first time winning the Euro’s since it’s begun, but it was also the first big time win for the England teams for 56 years. An absolutely stunning victory.

The extra time goal scored by Chloe Kelly, will forever change football and adds to the timeline that hasn’t exactly been straight forward.

Did you know that women’s football was banned in 1921? It was actually considered unsuitable for women to play football. This changed by the end of the 1960’s when they formed the WFA (Women’s Football Association) but imagine if this hadn’t been the case? There’d have been no representation of women in the sport and last night would’ve just been an ordinary Sunday night.

The players within the whole of the association should be proud, not only to represent England, but for inspiring younger generations everyday as they represent change and inclusion which is so very much important.

Celebrations are being held in London today between 11:00 – 14:00 for all fans and is well deserved after the efforts put in. A huge congratulations to bringing it home!