Sorry I have not kept you up to date but I now have my dog. We have had her for a month now. I wrote to an dog rescue charity and said that my only requirement in a dog was that it must get on with chickens!.. Sure enough a couple of weeks later I got an email saying about a dog called Blackie whose owner had died and was with the charity because the dog pound had no room for her and she was going to be put down. She came over with her foster family and the first thing we did was let her meet the chickens to which she took no interest whatsoever, she was much more interested in all the people around her. The chickens were a bit warey but soon got on with their normal business of scratching and pecking around for worms.

We had a trial of keeping her for three days and everything was fine except the chickens developed a habit of fluffing up their feathers to make them selves look as big as possible and running at blackie and pecking her so now she is very scared of the chickens!

Regarding dog food without chicken, I have found some brands that have no chicken whatsoever (although she did find a discarded KFC on a walk and had an embarrasingly upset tummy the next day).

When we first got her she trembled when we put the lead on her as she was not used to having a lead on her. Now she gets really excited as she knows it is walky time! She did not know what a walk was before as we believe she was not taken out for walks. Trouble is she has chewed through her flexi lead 3 times now We go religiously for two walks a day and this has allowed me to explore my area a lot more and of course spot more wildlife. The most interesting things so far being Goldcrests in a big pine tree andtwo dear, right by the Bristol ring road (we were within ten metres of one that did not move at all).

She sits quietly all day (on her home made dog bed) whilst I work (except when someone knocks on the door which is when she turns into a guard dog. (Not very professional when customers ring really, but the “I’ve bought my dog into the office today” line has fobbed them off so far. What I really mean is “I work from my spare bedroom and the dog is with me all day every day!

I don’t think we will have any problems going away as everyone who has met her has falled in love with her. We have had to go away for one night and she stayed back at her old foster carers and I was nearly in tears when I left her. My parents have also offered to help out. She is going on two holidays this year with us, Dawlish Warren and the Isle of Wight. I can’t wait, such an adventure for her and us!

She is a little black mongrel - Labrador, greyhound, terrier, collie - good gene pool there!

I went on a trip to Bournemouth today down lots of A roads.  The amount of roadkill was horrible - foxes, badgers, rabbits (much to my friends horror whose pet rabbit was having an operation today), pheasents etc.  I saw a woodpigeon with a broken wing, stopped but it managed to fly off so had to leave the poor thing.  Also saw lots of pigeons with gammy legs - nasty!

 I did see a deer running across the fields, and fed some squirrels chips - tut tut, oh and at 5.30 in the morning, heard the dawn corus without the traffic!

 In my area, there used to be a patch of pre fab houses with massive gardens I used to cycle past everyday - all the gardens were mature with roses and shrubs and grass - probably a haven for hedgehogs and birds, grasshoppers etc.  Now Bovis homes have stepped in and the place has been completely destroyed to make way for lots of tiny little (may as well be) back to back flats (how they expect anyone to be greener and recycle more I don’t know, with no storage or garden).  The whole place is destroyed.  On one wall there used to be some ivy.  When I cycled along yesterday I noticed there was still some clinging onto life although the majority has been sent to landfill, so I stopped and must have looked like the village nutter in my giant cycling hat and trousers tucked into my boots as I stooped down to peel it all off from between the pavement and the giant fence they have built round the place - I was hardly inconspicuous either in my dayglow yellow cycling coat with reflective panels and fluffy gloves with a hole that cost 25p from a jumple sale - nice!

 I have now planted the ivy next to my house and if it grows, I can say that it came from the beautiful ’field’ that made way for the nasty houses - providing the chooks don’t scratch it out!  A nice feeling to have rescued something!

Hi

Out of the 9 nestboxes I had in my garden last year, only one was occupied (and a lovely blackbird with only one tail feather nested in our hedge).  The occupyer was a pair of blue tits.  When I trimmed my guinea pig’s hair, I stuck some in a disused fat feeder ‘cage’ and noticed a blue tit that took Jimmy’s fur and kept going to the bird box!  Very exciting!  Then I used to watch from the upstairs bedroom window flying endlesslessly around my garden grabbing mealworms and sunflower seeds from various feeders.  Then one day when it was pouring with rain I noticed a tiny blue tit in the hedge.  On checking it several times it’s parents did appear to feed it.  I only hope the little thing survived (and he could not have been born into a better garden with his own personal cat scarer and endless amounts of birdfood!)  At the weekend I was very excited as the time came to clean out the bird box, the first time I have ever had to do this!  Expecting to see a next of black and white curly guinea pig fur, I was quite wrong!  The amount of stuff in there was amazing, and all that for a tiny little bird.  it was as if they covered the entire floor of the bird box in about 2 inches of hay, moss, Christmas tinsel(!?!), then built a nest on top.  The entire contents was worrying damp though (maybe becauseof the horrid summer if you could call it that), and as well as a couple of maggoty things and a cacoon, there was sadly an unhatched egg buried within the nest.

I stuffed the contents into two home made bug boxes, just in case the maggots were baby bumble bees (I would have felt very guilty otherwis) we replaced the roof (and drilled a hole in the bottom to hopefully air it a bit more, and hung it up high in the tree ready for next year.  There have been some blue tits hoping around some fingers crossed for re occupation!

On my bird TV today, I have captured a collared dove pecking the seed off the birdtable and a sparrow - very interesting sseeing them close up, the collared dove’s bill was nothing like how I amagined it to be.

 Also saw a dunnock singing in my hedge - have heard the song many times before so I now know what it is!

 Also field mice have made a nest behind the pond and eat the spilled grain, and house mice in the new chicken shed - to kill or not to kill……

…my first blackbird of the year, sitting in my tree singing it’s beautifully haunting song. 

There have been many screaching over the past few weeks, but not this!  Spring is on its way for sure!  I wonder when the hedgehogs will appear!

For Christmas I had a gift that any nature lover would dream of!  A portable security CCTV camera that works in night or day.  At priced £24.99 in Wilkos (the later reduced to £10) what a bargain!  We put it up the top of the garden in front of some birdseed and for a day I was glued to the TV in the warm, we saw some sparrows, a huge blackbird and many chickens (mostly sabataging the whole event by eating the bird food and pecking the camera so much it fell over)!  Unfortunately the next day, the camera didn’t work and I was very upset.  But I now have another one, it has been up for two days, pointing at some guinea pig food on the floor - so far I have seen………. a cat, typical, it was walking very slowly as if it was stalking something.  It soon ran though when I opened the door armed with my giant water pistol/bazuka.

 Tomorrow though, I am at home so will position it so I can have it on whilst working away (on setting up my business working on home so one day I can stay at home all day!)…

 I shall reveal anything I see!

Hi all

 Sorry its been such a long time, I am now in a prt time job so have four days a week to spot wildlife.  I thought I would start off with the things I have seen this year:

1) A baby blackbird this morning on the cycle track (the one in Bristol where they want to knock all the trees down and turn it into a bus road - more about that later!)

2) A plump green catapillar eating its way through my clementis.

3) Frogs (but no frog spawn) - one in the road which I had to carry home before he got squashed.  Two in my ‘puddle’ in the polytunnel, five in my wildlife pond and 3 in my other pond.

4) Jays in my garden eating monkeynuts - quite rare for the suburbs I thought!

5) A blackbird in my garden that acts like a robin, eating the worms you throw him.

6) A squirrel in my garden on Christmas day!  There’s a first for everything!

 7) Tortoiseshell butterflies - the chickens ran after them but luckily no one got them.

 8) Two new chickens, Mrs Badger and Margaret bring the total up to seven.  (Mrs Badger has learnt to use the cat flap so she comes in the kitchen and lays her egg in the indoor guinea pig house (much to Gary’s amusement!).

My friend has just moved down the road from me so I am very happy about that.  They have ‘adopted’ a cat that keeps coming in their garden buying it food, toys, a basket, a sparkly collar and even flea powder and worming tablets.  I don’t know what its owners will think when it comes home with a new spangly collar (but it does have a bell on it which will hopefully save some lives).  I was tolarating it and even played with it for a bit, my opinion of cats slightly chaging until we were sat on the patio and it ran past with something in its mouse :(  I was told by my friends to leave it to it but how could I when it was wiggling.  The cat looked into my eyes and squeezed with its jaws and blood dripped on the floor.  I then managed to pick up the cat and it droppd the rodent, but then I dropped the cat so it picked up the poor little shrew and started to swipe it with its claws again.  Finally I managed to resue it with the help of a flower pot and put it in a box.  It did not look that damaged apart from one blown eye.  I think it was a bank shrew.  After a while in the box it appeared to perk up so I took it home.  This morning though it was just lying there on its side kicking its legs out unable to stand.  Perhaps I should have let the cat finish it off, but I would have felt very guilty about it.  I suspect that although it was able to run and jump last night it will be dead by the time I get home :(  My friend promised me that if the cat bough live birds home she would phone me what ever the hour and I could go round and rescue them.  Needless to say, I am not going to make friends with that cat after all.

For a while now the ony birds I have seen in my garden are sparrows fighting over the fat balls and woodpigeons fighting over the chicken corn.  There are no sign of the blackbirds or the baby robins, or the hords of starlings that fought over my home made lard mixture in June and July.  I alwaus think the worst, that the cats in the area have got them.  I really hope not. 

As there was no cheap hedgehog food left in B & Q, I had to buy some expensive stuff (£7 for 2.5kg!!) but will look on the internet.  I only saw one hedgehog at a time, and then a horrible tabby cat eating it.  It got a cosmetics bottle thrown out the window at it.  Thats the same cat that keeps going in my polytunnel.  There was a white one this morning as well that the neighbour feeds.  I scared it up he garden but it still managed to pee on a cardboard box in front of me as if to say ‘its my terratory’ before it trotted off.  How can I get rid of the horrible things!

 I am however, very glad to see so many sparrows, a slow worm in my compost bin and a frog in a plant pot.  I told them both to run away from the chickens.

At lunch, whilst on a ‘business’ call I also rescued a huge bumble bee that looked a bit disorientated in the road.  It flew off into the hedge so I hope it is ok.