wildlife in the garden

Me.
I mean, I'm sometimes the wild life in the garden, 'cos that's where I go to cool off when I'm in a temper. Well, it's a better option than getting done for gbh.

Like it, joan.

Slept in my own bed last night after all. The bees settle down at night and I hoovered up all the dead ones on the floor!

We have a brood of young magpies. Boy! Are they noisy!

I have just discovered what is nibbling the leaves of my fuschias!!! Its a group (? collective noun for caterpillars?) of caterpillars. After much research I discovered that they are Elephant Hawk Moth Caterpillars!!! At the moment we have 4 (probably more hiding)and they are about 7-8cms long, dark brown with horizonal banding and a long trunk like snout. I would love them to survive the winter and hatch out next spring. I have read conflicting ideas regarding putting them in a box with soil etc, but I am not convinced, would it be best to leave them alone and let them find their own winter residence. My grandchildren would love to see the complete circle of life , Help or information please gransnetters

Your magpies are quite far north, Baggy, aren't they? I don't think they've crossed the Firth of Tay yet, though I know you're in the west. There's a nest just beyond the end of my garden. The parents took over an abandoned crows' nest and built a dome over the top of it. I can watch proceedings from my bed, early in the morning, in the month before the leaves obscure everything. I seem to have a lot of the corvines: crows, jackdaws and jays are noisy as well. And the grey squirrels join in the cacophony, scolding the birds and each other.

We live on the edge of countryside and have, at various times, dozens of magpies, wood pigeons, collared doves, blue tits, great tits, coal tits, long-tailed tits, nuthatches, robins, bullfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, blackbirds, jays, and the odd fox or two. I think we also have badgers although I've never seen them. On Christmas day last year we had 7 male and 6 female pheasants (we had an awful lot of snow). We can hear owls at night but have never seen them and we see the odd bat or two. We have way too many squirrels unfortunately.

I feed the birds all year round and it costs a small fortune but it's worth it to see them bring their babies in.

We have loads of cats going through the garden (very quickly) (I have one cat) but the feeders are placed high up on poles and under trees so that the birds always have an escape route if necessary. However, the last couple of days two collared doves have been taken by, I think, either a kestrel or sparrowhawk but certainly not by cats.

When we moved here last year we also inherited a pond with, at the last count, at least 16 fish of various hues.

Oh, I forgot, we have dunnocks and hedge sparrows too.

We're a bit further south than the Firth of Tay, Annobel, plus the west is warmer than the east of Scotland anyway. We also have crows and jays (which eat all our apples off a very old, fallen down tree that still produces wee apples full of worms — jay food) but I've only ever seen a jackdaw in our garden once. However, in the next village they are very common.

For all their noise and predatory behaviour, magpies are beautiful birds. I think of Gerald Durrell's pair in My Family and Other Animals whenever I see them.

Just checked in The Birds of the Western Palearctic (because your comment was news to me, Annobel)and apparently magpies do go further north than the Firth of Tay, right up to the southern part of Caithness, but there is a gap around the Fife and Angus areas. How odd! There's also a gap in the Scottish Borders. Very roughly speaking, it looks as if they prefer low lying land.

Once, a couple of years ago, I saw what I thought was a brown paper bag that had blown up into a tree across the stream. But when I got the binoculars out, I was surprised to see a tawny owl facing me, in broad daylight. I often hear owls at night, not to mention the raucous din made by foxes.

We have a large number of birds in spite of all the cats in the area. We also have a family of hedgehogs living at the top of the garden and they often snuffle along the patio when we are sat out in the evening. Two dry stone walls each house a family of shrews that can be seen stealing peas from the tortoise dish. Under the tortoise house and at several other places in the garden there are groups of slow worms which often show themselves. All very stimulating for the youngsters.

Message deleted by Gransnet.

Don't advertise

Last week I was picking some silverbeet for dinner - and a one metre long black snake wiggled towards me with his fangs showing. I was petrified, but a friend was with me and she simply eased it away by putting the rake in front of it, so that it could only move back the way it came. I breathed again when it went under the fence - then I had to tell next doors that it was there in her garden. She had seen it in her garden before, she said. Knowing her, she'll kill it, though we are not allowed.

Well, I'll not be telling!

Hope she identifies it first because if it's not venomous, why kill it? I know Australia has more than its fair share venomous species.

It is definitely venomous, but still illegal to kill it. She has 4 dogs and will be fearing for them. It would be better if it just went away - there's a big Main Roads Dept depot at the end of both our gardens - with a bit of luck it will vanish off into there....

I have tawny owls in the wood behind my house. It's lovely to lie reading in bed, listening to them calling to each other.

Last year, I planted 20 crown of asparagus in my new raised bed, thinking of the delights to come. They duly sprouted and one morning I woke early to see a vixen scraping them all up - not a single one survived! Cheek!

- the joy of gardening, eh?

Think Owls are great, and we had a couple in our barn this year. Then they disappeared, and now one is back again - but they certainly do make a mess!

I recently noticed that my lilly pilly tree in the front garden is in flower, so now I've started watching for birds, and this morning a lovely multi-coloured Rosella came and had a good feed. Beautiful!

PS
I haven't seen the black snake again, but I've been busy making sure he's got no hiding places.

Glad you haven't had any more snake visits, joan. Glad it doesn't visit my garden too as it would be impossible to get rid of all the gazillion hiding places it could use! Besides, there is other wildlife living in them, which I wouldn't want to disturb. I'm not sure which wood pile the hedgehog lives in. There are bank vole holes all over the place and holey old walls where wood mice live and where coal tits nest in the summer, and little holes in the steepest part of the hill where a willow warbler nests. And those are only the obvious ones. Yes, definitely glad we don't have visits from venomous snakes!

We have outside letterboxes at the top of our drives or garden paths here, and a little khaki-green frog lives in mine. He's really cute, and seems to live on flies and skinks.

I have a few patches of Pulmonaria in my garden. They go on year after year without needing any care. The flowers ,( pink and blue on the same plant) and with green and silvery leaves are coming into bloom now. The bees haven't arrived yet , but it won't be too long before I will hear the constant buzzing every time I am near them. The bees seem to love them.

spooky i just posted about the very same thing on the other thread. get over there nutmeg we are talking hard core gardening for insects. Thinks, did nutmeg lose her way a little?... nudge nudge, get over there to the thread Jane started woman

I've got some of those.