So I'm super far behind on this now - thanks to a lot of chocolate related holidays that made work busy and a crazy long uni project which I've just completed this week!
Time for a bit of a catch up with whats's been going on in the garden.
March:
Started with finding some really unusual larvae in the baking tray pond. At first I thought these were some kind of may-fly larvae, as they had a really long body with 2/3 little 'tails' at the end. Turns out (after getting the local expert to have a look - thanks Celine!) that they are actually Great Diving Beetle larvae! It seems like they do spend a bit of time flying around as adults, so I can only assume they came from another pond (or from a bird washing it's feet).
The water in the pond (and the half whisky barrel I've got as a secondary pond) has been getting pretty oily, so I tossed a couple of pieces of watercress (from a supermarket bought bag) in as it is supposed to help clean it.
The hedgehogs returned to the garden at the end of March (on the trail camera at any rate) - earlier than I was expecting, not sure if this was due to the 'slightly' warmer winter, or that they hadn't built enough fat reserves from last year - certainly they seemed hungry enough! One caught on camera wanted a fully immersive dinner experience and climbed into the bowl - perhaps to prevent anyone else from getting any?
There's been a lot of blackbird activity , with 3 males, a female and a juvenile all chasing each other about the garden. Starlings started nest building, collecting grass clippings from the garden and taking them up to the roof spaces. The female sparrows have discovered a very suitable source of twigs for their nests...by plucking bits out of our fence! They are nothing if not resourceful.
April:
Saw the arrival of some squirrel chicks (ok ok...'kits') and some rather frenetic mother squirrels at their wits ends. The squirrels appear to nest in a big leylandii hedge near us (although a rather irate neighbour told me that he had previously had some nesting in his attic). This first clutch consisted of two chicks, both males (I think). Naturally I first saw them on a morning when I had to rush to work - but they caused a bit of chaos as they learned how the world works - pots kicked over, bulbs dug out etc. One is much more confident than the other and has now fully left mum, but the other keeps hanging round her - and she is not happy about that!
We were really lucky one evening to find two hegehogs on our back porch step (naturally a night when I'd left the food bowl at the opposite end of the garden). One was making a really unusual 'chuffing' sound - which is a sound the females make when courting! I went out to fetch (and fill) a bowl for the happy couple.
Since then, we've been getting two hogs regularly, although they've been less friendly, so its possible they are different hogs or else it was just a hook-up. I'm pretty sure at least one of the hogs visited us last year, as they remember where the peanut feeder is, and roughly how to get there.
I've had to reinstate the hedgehog accessiblity ramp, and fortunately they are starting to use it on the descent as well as the ascent. There was one night of trail cam footage of hog after hog, misjudging the drop at the bottom of the step. They have worse depth-perception than Kronk, but I guess they are having to judge it in the dark.
The foxes have been slow to come back to the garden, probably because they are better fed elsewhere in the street. Although I have found a few whole chicken eggs in various buckets of soil I'd left in the garden. The photos below are actually from last year, when we first discovered that the local foxes use our garden as an egg store. This fox brought out an egg and ate it, right in the middle of the garden on afternoon.
Another garden visitor who enjoys hedgehog kibble....
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