wildlife

[Palustris]

Ian. I doubt that you would welcome badgers when you see the damage they have caused here. I reckon we are talking over £1500 of bulbs and plants destroyed. Maybe you can afford that, but we certainly cannot. To badger proof the perimeter is going to cost a staggering amount in fencing too.

[brianw]

Yes Ian. The nest box had a slightly larger hole than necessary for Blue Tits so I bought some aluminium plates on ebay, B.T. size. Yes we have woodpeckers, frequently.

The spiral is an earlier attempt at a Squirrel deterrent, on an older feeder, that did not work, but smaller birds queue on it to feed so it stays.
The jury is still out on Badgers here.

They have been here before and this was so dug up over-night we think it was too much too quickly for Rooks, which sometimes make fairly neat but deeper and narrower holes. It was just a flat settled wood-chip mulch the day before. It has happened again a few nights later to a lesser extent, which could have been either "pest". I like and have watched Badgers but prefer they were not in my garden.

[brianw]

My Blue Tits flew 2 days ago. Just 3 young from the original 7 eggs. The smallest took several hours after the first 2 to go. Checked the nest after. No corpses.
Part dismantled the box to realign the camera and raised it a fraction to get a wider angle. Thought about removing the B. T. plate to leave a slightly larger hole and encourage something else to use it. Any thoughts?

[Stan da Prato]

Metal plates at the entrance to a nest box do not  deter  woodpeckers which can simply  drill in elsewhere.

[Yann]

I was repoting some Crocus in the greenhouse when suddenly i heard a sound that cover the ventilator:



i slowly ran  to the house to grab the camera, still there when i entered the greenhouse.

[brianw]

Guess this comes here. Went into the garden this evening and a very fine thread like worm? was waving about in free air from the surface of a leaf. Maybe 8-10 cms long but only as thick as a cotton thread. Lifted it off and put it on the ground, so not "sticky". What was it?

[ian mcdonald]

I found a dead goldfinch in the garden this morning.

[johnw]

On a happier note a friend's sister in Lunenburg Co., Nova Scotia built an owl house last year.



john

[Roma]

I've been seeing a tree sparrow occasionally at the bird seed in the last few days and today there were two adults feeding two babies under the feeder.  I am not sure I have ever seen a tree sparrow before.  Certainly not well enough to identify.  Too shy to get any pictures. 

[Lesley Cox]

I would say eyed hawk moth caterpillar.

!I thought it was a still-curled-up leaf! Fantastic camouflage!

[Lesley Cox]

Brian, in regard to your tit box, is there a metal plate over the hole. If not, birds may feel at risk from squirrels and woodpeckers. Palustris, in spite of the damage I would be pleased to see badgers. Perhaps scones with jam might tempt them away from your plants? I have never seen a live badger. Plenty of dead ones as road and rail casualties. Most have been killed one way or the other in this area, many by illegal diggers.

Scones with jam?? I should be so lucky. Do they let it be known which kind of jam they would prefer? Apricot? strawberry? black currant? I expect home-made is best? And how about with whipped cream too?

[Anthony Darby]

!I thought it was a still-curled-up leaf! Fantastic camouflage!

You been messing around your time machine again Lesley?

[Anthony Darby]

Scones with jam?? I should be so lucky. Do they let it be known which kind of jam they would prefer? Apricot? strawberry? black currant? I expect home-made is best? And how about with whipped cream too?

We had scones with raspberry jam and whipped cream for yesterday's morning tea.

[Palustris]

We just had more plants destroyed. And I meant Hesperantha coccinea, not Schizanthus.
No idea where they are getting in now as we have fenced the whole garden. Cannot see where they are climbing over and there are not holes or places where they have lifted the netting.
Would you be pleased if they had eaten 1500 or so Tulips and countless Brodiaea and Hesperantha and dug up hundreds of pounds worth of plants and shrubs to get at them? You are more generous than we can afford to be.

[Maggi Young]

Terrible news, Eric - is it possible there's one trapped inside the garden now?  Hiding under a shed or something? We've had that happen, but thankfully only with a couple of little rabbits, long ago.