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!).