..but still as I walked to town with no brolley (I don’t have very goood umbrella skills), wet hair stuck to my face and sopping jeans I still thought to myself I would much rather be doing this a thousand times over than sat in an office!  I stood for ages in the wilkos isle, trying to identify a food that the hedgehogs might like to eat (as do not have the car and the little chaps have eaten nearly all their supply from B & Q) - I can’t let them go hungry now.  My criteria was something without fish as I read they don’t take to fish too kindly, and one without chicken for obvious reasons.  My purchase was puppy food 58p crunchy biscuits with ‘legal derivatives’ in it.  Mmmmmm.  I shall see tonight if they like it!  I feel tired as all this hedgehog watching is keeping me up late!

 I saw my first V shaped geese flight of the year, and was saddened at the thought of winter coming.  No daylight hours for me to enjoy outside for months on end.  Last year I spent a great deal of the winter weekends, sat motionless in the polytunnel watching the tits, greenfinches, blackbirds and other feeding up the top of the garden.  Sometimes getting up at 5 in the morning to do so.  My friends would think I was mad.

I have found in the paper a parcel of land for £20k not far from here, an old piggery with lots of mature trees on it.  I wish I could buy it but some property developer will probably snap it up and build hundreds of tiny flats on it. 

 I am happy as my friend has just bought a house down the road - her garden is just a long bit of grass but I did see a blackbird in a neighbours garden and hear a blue tit in another and gave her some bird fat balls so hopefully the birds will come into her garden too. 

I bought some 75% of hedgehog food in B & Q but I think I am going to have to go back to see if they have some more.  I put some out in a cup and the next thing I knew there was a baby hedgehog sat in the cup!  The next day two appeared, then three (fighting over the food)  this morning the cup was empty so i put out some more food and there were four baby hedgehogs munching out on the lawn!  They are so cute!

I also saw a rat munching under the bird feeder - think he has dug into the guinea pig run. NAUGHTY 

Hi

Welcome to my blog. Hopefully you will find something in common with me and my way of life here in the Westcountry.

My interest in wildlife stems back to when I was a little girl back in the 80s, chasing frogs through the garden, catching sticklebacks in the stream and rescuing birds and slow worms from the cats and magpies. Usually in my scruffy ripped jeans and long hair I refused to brush! (Not a lot has changed there.) Watching the fascinating way raindrops and dew collected on the lupin leaves was always more interesting to me than playing with boring dolls and I was always playing outside come rain or shine. I used to get told off lots for raiding the kitchen cupboards and making bird cakes to hang in the ‘bird bush’ (dog wood) that attracted lots of birds (the most interesting I clearly remembered as being loly pop shaped long tailed tits). Dudley the border terrier also seemed to go through his bonios biscuits quickly as well. Funny that there were always foxes in the front garden at night (oh and once a dear). (Years later my mother told me that the neighbour told her that I should not be feeding them as they were vermin - mmm, I know what I would have said to her!)

Unfortunatley though I became a teenager and forgot about all the things that made me smile as a kid until I was 24 twelve or so years later when my boyfriend shocked me with an allotment as a present! Spending time there rekindled my memories and a year later bought our first little house, a little red brick semi in the suburbs of Bristol. Built on an estate for soldiers returning from the First World War, these houses had ample gardens (much larger than the pokey excuse for a garden with new builds now). These are the types of houses property people buy knock down and build a street of 32 ‘luxury’ apartments with no garden, and sell them all for more than what his house cost. At the back of the garden we are also lucky enough to have a triangle of what was once allotments that laid for 15 years as a patch of blambles and wildlife. Unfortunately the previous owners attempted to turn it into a “field”, together with the garden. I however am attempting to turn it into an oasis for wildlife, as well as a large vegetable patch as cheaply as possible, fighting against the habits of my 5 ex battery chickens and the local murderous cats.

This is my story