Wildlife -January 2010

[mark smyth]

I have a first in my garden today. I have been in this house over 20 years and today there is a fieldfare feeding on apples I put out. Not so much feeding but fighting off the blackbird, thrush and redwing.

[Michael J Campbell]

Mark, I have just one Fieldfare as well and lots of Redwings. the Redwings will not share food but this morning the Fieldfare and a Redwing were sharing the same apple. Most unusual.

[Anthony Darby]

There's a female Smew on Linlithgow Loch at the moment.

[ashley]

Large numbers of redwing in the Cork area now, possibly moving south and west from the cold weather
(short article in today's Irish Times here).

Drinking water is much appreciated by garden birds, although needs regular de-icing.

[Hristo]

Anthony, is that pronounced 'Smew" or 'Shmoo", if the latter then I have a pic!!

[Michael J Campbell]

I had to leave the pond pump running night and day to keep a supply of water for the birds, some of them are even bathing in the small waterfall. if I switch off the pump the filter system freezes up and is very difficult to get going again.

[Anthony Darby]

Anthony, is that pronounced 'Smew" or 'Shmoo", if the latter then I have a pic!!

Smew (Mergellus albellus) is pronounced as it is spelled. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/smew) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smew

[daveyp1970]

Maggie i would love to see the photos of Angies husbands rock work and your right it is an art form,i have a chap who is 62 who i get to do all my dry stone walls(i can do it but this guy is artist)i just stand in awe at his work.I love looking at dry stone work when im on my travels(much to my wifes annoyance)the regional differences are fantastic.

[Richard Green]

This column of Ivy has had its leaves eaten completely up to about one metre from the ground by deer this week.  The same has happened to a different variety of Ivy on the house wall.  Deer have good taste as they have also chewed the nice small leaves of Rhododendron but left the large coarse ones. The second picture is of the culprit - a roe deer - you can see it is standing near the evergreen Viburnum tinus (on the far right of the photo) which it has also stripped up as far as it can reach.  Sorry for the poor quality but it was taken in the twilight at max telephoto. I suppose I have to be sympathetic given the current climate!

[Maggi Young]

I expect you may find the deer dead later, Richard.... a friend in Aberdeenshire did after it ate her rhodos a few years ago.... no injuries, just well grown but dead deer. Her son is a vet and said  he thought it was likely the rhodo foliage was the cause of death.

[Maggi Young]

Maggie i would love to see the photos of Angies husbands rock work and your right it is an art form,i have a chap who is 62 who i get to do all my dry stone walls(i can do it but this guy is artist)i just stand in awe at his work.I love looking at dry stone work when im on my travels(much to my wifes annoyance)the regional differences are fantastic.

No luck finding them so far, I'm afraid. 

[johnw]

I expect you may find the deer dead later, Richard.... a friend in Aberdeenshire did after it ate her rhodos a few years ago.... no injuries, just well grown but dead deer. Her son is a vet and said  he thought it was likely the rhodo foliage was the cause of death.

Maggi;

How I wish it were true but I think the vet was quite wrong.  A friend here has had over 10,000 rhododendrons - lepidotes, elepidotes, azaleas - completely eaten by introduced white-tailed deer.  The only ones left on 30 acres are those over 8 feet tall, all the foliage and branches have been eaten up to 8 ft.  A life's work down the drain.   Taxus, magnolias, mt. laurels and hollies included. They have knocked the deer-fencing down, out-smarted electric fences and are probably joining the slow food movement and planning a move to other delicacies.  Some may even be SRGC members!

The problem is wide-spread all the way down the east coast.

johnw

[Maggi Young]

John, a horrifying tale of destruction.

I do hope there are not too many SRGC members in their number.....we do have a goodly quotient of old dears but most of our members are just darling.......

[Richard Green]

I am not sure about Rhodos, but I thought I heard somewhere that Ivy contained Hydrocyanic Acid and was poisonous if not fatal.  It causes mild skin irritation for me when I cut it back off the wall without gloves.  However I think the amimals are probably desperate at this time of year.

[Roma]

Roe deer seem to be able to eat ivy with no ill effects.  No ivy near my house has leaves below roe deer head height.  When I worked at the Cruickshank Garden in Aberdeen by the end of winter ivy which had spread as groundcover at the edge of the arboretum was reduced to leafless stalks.  I watched one eating yew in the rock garden.  She did die eventually several years and a few babies later.  Bergenia was another favourite, also pulsatilla flowers.  It was a bit disappointing to watch the flower buds developing on big clumps of possibly hybrid self sown pulsatillas and come in one morning to find them all eaten.