WILD ? .."I was LIVID" !..(Wildlife Corner)

[Julie in Norfolk]

I was only contemplating "home coming frogs" on Sunday last.

[Stanley]

Not strictly wild life but closely associated. There is a footbridge in Valley Gardens across Butts Beck into the end of Federation Street. Just downstream from the bridge is the mouth of a large land drain. Jack Bradley once told me that occasionally raw sewage runs out into the beck but until this week I had never seen it happen. On Tuesday thick grey effluent was running out and discolouring the beck downstream. Above the outfall it was crystal clear. I'm going to see what I can do about it.....

[Moh]

I mentioned before about the little rabbit that runs about our close, well something had been digging under our lounge window. We suspected the rabbit but had no proof, then yesterday afternoon it bobbed on to the small wall from the pavement and hopped up the stones. We stood at the window and it just stood and stared at us and then proceeded to dig. Hubby opened the window and it ran off. This morning I went out to see if it had been digging again and there it was, it looked at me and ran off quickly.

[Stanley]

It's trying to tunnel into the kitchen Moh!

[Nolic]

Picked Dan up from Liverpool last evening and driving East on the M65 just outside Burnley saw a pitiful sight.
Cars were slowing and quickly flashing their hazards as there was an injured duck right on the white line separating the two lanes. With her was her drake who was hissing at traffic trying to fend it away from from her. I don't think she had long left but I do hope the brave little chap got away without injury. Nolic

[Tizer]

This evening Mrs Tiz shouted to me "There's been a murder in the back yard"! Now, this is a quiet village and we don't usually get Midsomer Murders and the like so I doffed my Marigolds (washing up) and went to look. No blood and gore, no body - just a covering of feathers all across the flags as if there had been a pillow fight. The suspect is a sparrowhawk which must have carried off one of the many doves that fly around here and had eaten it for supper. Either that or the dove escaped, but if it did then it must be a naked dove and feeling the cold! I wish the sparrowhawk would catch the pigeons that fly like jumbo jets across our garden but it might be a step too far, even for a female sparrowhawk with young to feed. I'd eat the pigeons myself but if you fire a gun the urban incomers will call out the police terrorist unit!

[Tizer]

...and here is Mrs Tiz's photo as evidence of the dirty deed! I had to use the vacuum cleaner this morning to suck up all the feathers.

[catgate]

...and here is Mrs Tiz's photo as evidence of the dirty deed! I had to use the vacuum cleaner this morning to suck up all the feathers.

It must be contageous.
Late in the afternoon there was a bang on our bungalow roof. We looked out and could see nothing anywhere to explain the noise.
After tea I went out and into the rear garden and in the middle of the lawn was the residue from the sparrow hawk's teatime pigeon. Presumably the bang was when he missed the pigeon (they often sit on the roof) and hit the tiles. He obviously came back when he had recovered his composure and had more success.

[Tripps]

There was a picture of a rare black fox last week in the local press. It did look like a fox and it wasn't 1st April. All confirmed on TV news tonight as sadly it has been run over, and was shown on the slab at Cambridge where it was being examined and DNA tested. Lady said it was about eighteen months old and had been 'very healthy' . There are also black squirrels not far away - (N. Herts), and I've seen a colony of black rabbits.

[Stanley]

Isn't it funny how there can be 'hot-spots' of genetic variations. I remember reading an article once about there being a higher proportion of tall, well-built people round Coulsdon in Surrey. In the end they decided it was because in the old days, recruitment for attendants at the large mental hospital nearby was largely decided on size. They favoured big nurses! This skewed the average for the district.
When I was farming at Whatcote we had a large proportion of white wild rabbits and the most likely cause was that in the old days when rabbits were farmed in warrens for sale, white rabbits were introduced to improve the stock. Their legacy lived on in the wild stock.

[Wendyf]

Our bird table is being visited by a pair of reed buntings. I have just identified Mrs Bunting, who is very pretty, and realised that the chap I took to be a sparrow (rarely seen up here), was in fact Mr Bunting. My field is turning into a wetland habitat, perhaps we shouldn't fix the field drains after all....

[Stanley]

Apply for a subsidy Wendy!

[Tizer]

Catty, the pigeons here are so big and heavy they take off by means of the curvature of the Earth.

[Sunray10]

We have fat wood pigeons coming into our garden eating scraps of bread put out for little birds. Yes, and these wood pigeons are really fat and, they do have difficulty taking off again !!

[Whyperion]

Pie Time ?

[Tizer]

For any of the aviation-minded folk out there, my phrase "take off by means of the curvature of the Earth" was used by the British Avro Vulcan crews to describe the big American B52 bombers. When the Vulcan went to perform at American air shows the crowds would see their own wonderful B52 lumber away down the long runway into the distance and eventually "take off by means of the curvature of the Earth". Then the Vulcan would roll off the start line, point it's nose straight at the sky and disappear into the blue with an earth shattering roar. It would be an understatement to say the American spectators were impressed! Perhaps that's why they had to build the Space Shuttle!

[Stanley]

I always remember watching one of the first 747s doing take off and landing training at Prestwick around 1970. I knew it weighed close to 400 tons and what surprised me viewing the take off from behind was the way it suddenly cocked its nose up and ascended so steeply. That was impressive!

[Moh]

The rabbit which visits our close has found a friend so we have two visiting now.

[Tizer]

There'll soon be lots of little rabbits Moh! The sparrows here are busy carrying nesting material into the nestboxes. I emptied an old compost heap the other day and got a surprise. We have two wooden compost bins and one matures while the other is being filled, so the old one sits for at least two years before being emptied and the compost spread on the garden. It has a lid but I usually leave a plastic sheet over the compost to keep in the moisture. In the old bin I'd also added a spare sheet of bubble wrap to keep it warm. When I opened the bin the bubble wrap had been chewed by the voles that live in our bins. I knew there would be vole nests in cavities in the compost and these would be exposed as I emptied the bin, although the voles will have cleared out when they heard me coming. But the surprise was that the voles had taken pieces of bubble wrap, each piece a couple of inches in size, down into the compost and lined their nests with it. So we've had very high-tech voles, using a modern insulating material instead of the old hay and moss! They must have been very cosy in those nests! Like us, the voles want to reduce their energy bills, and in their case this means the more insulated the nest, the less they lose body heat and the less food they need to eat.

[Stanley]

Wonderful. I have another mental picture of Moh watching the footy, supping wine and watching the rabbits skipping about in the yard.
The following is really Pet's Corner but then it's a good example of nature in the wild, red in tooth and claw. Jack was off his lead as usual in Valley Gardens and went across, tail wagging, to say good morning to a Border Terrier. The Border wasn't in the mood and immediately grabbed hold of Jack just over his left fore leg. The man holding the lead was hitting his dog over the head with the large retractable lead box, I had bith hands in the Borer's mouth trying to open his jaws and it seemed an age before the dog let go. Jack was relatively unscathed and when I got home I washed the spot with warm water and disinfectant, no puncture wounds but some hair missing and a small tear. He has shown no sign of being affected. The man with the Border was distraught and I had to reassure him. It's his daughter's dog and he told me it went for everything. It must be hell having a dog like that because of course you can';t let it off the lead so it becomes even more bored and nasty. Big problem and it makes you wonder whether it has ever been allowed to socialise. Lucky escape for Jack, could have been much worse. I don't blame the dog, the fault is with whoever reared it.

[Tizer]

Yes, you wonder about how a dog like that has been treated, as I wonder how a child has been treated when they turn out nasty.

[Stanley]

Quite. Nurture causes more problems than nature.

[Stanley]

I don't know whether it's just a local circumstance or more widespread but the blackbirds in Valley Gardens are incredibly laid back. They will allow Jack or me within about three or four feet before they react and when they do they just hop a bit further away. Saw a magpie down there yesterday and it struck me that they were very common a couple of years ago but this is the first one I have seen for a while.

[Stanley]

I was talking to Doc and he said there was a big owl in residence on the deck. Not the Eagle Owl, no sightings of that for a long while.

[EileenDavid]

Plenty of wildlife here and thats only the campers partying. Seriously though deer roam freely through the site but so do other wild life. Found a deer hoof with about 12" of bone attached. There's also a small zoo nearby and we awoke one morning to a wallaby sat on our decking area. Eileen