I am very excited to report that, in addition to at least our usual dozen pairs of sparrows in the nesting boxes on the garage and elsewhere in the garden and under the eaves of the house (where I can hear then scuffling about when I’m in the bathroom),
I also have 2 pairs of potential tenants in the blue tit boxes (holes are smaller so the sparrows can’t get in)
and I’ve located one Blackbird nest in the hedge, down the side of the outside loo. Mr Blackbird gives the location away by sitting on the loo roof at night to guard it !
Think the robins are at the other end of the hedge but not found them yet - but I hear strange childlike twitterings when I walk past.
PS Costs me a fortune in bird food feeding this lot. My husband has added a ‘bird food’ entry to his household budget spreadsheet.
and that’s not counting the mealy worms for the hedgehog.
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If you want to make sure that your bird food is going to birds and not squirrels I recommend stirring the seed with a couple of table spoons of veg oil and a couple of table spoons of extra hot chilli powder (buy it in bulk from an indian super market) before you put it out. The birds are insensitive to the capsacin (the hot bit of chilli) but the squirrel isn’t - when I did it the squirrel drunk the bird bath dry but he only went after the bird seed once. (oh how I laughed)
I’m thinking of repeating the mark, release, recapture experiment I did on the snails a couple of years back. It was going well and looking like it was taking the snails a week to make it back to my garden but then the hedgehog wandered through the test zone and ate my carefully marked subjects.
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That’s brilliant, Joy! It’s lovely that your birds are so successful and well worth the quantity of bird food. The problem with husbands (at least mine) is that they seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing 
Love Sam x
Perhaps the marks made the snail easier to find? If that’s so I will be out there today with the tip-ex!
Love Sam x
He does mutter about the bag fulls of food but… he also does agree how nice it is to have a garden full of birds.
I woke early this morning so opened the window and went back to sleep seranaded by the dawn chorus. That thrush does sing so much more sweetly when I’ve given him his cheese !
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I didn’t have any tipex so I used an old bottle of sparkly aqua blue nailpolish for the first round of test subjects and sparkly deep purple for the second round - both colour ways suffered the same fate at the jaws of the hedgehog. There was sparkly hedgehog poo in the garden which is how I know their fate was at his jaws rather than a neighbour’s snail traps. Let me know how the tipex goes down.
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I’m being stared at by a blue tit sat on the phone line out side my workshop window - do you think he knows I’m still in my PJs?
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Brilliant bird spot yesterday - 2 swallows on the wire above the house (More than one therefore a summer 
) Made my day.
Yesterday was the first day with any warmth in it.
How exactly did those swallows know that when they left Africa 5 or 6 weeks ago.
It seems our weather forecasts only have any real accuracy 12 hours in advance even with all that sophisticated equipment but the humble swallow can forecast a warm front from thousands of miles away more than a month in advance.
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Thats a fantastic spot, Joy! I was on Portland Bill 2 weeks ago and the swallows were zipping in from the sea every few seconds on the last leg of their journey. It’s so nice some of them have found a home with you!
Love Sam x
An interesting encounter today! I spotted the heron on the roof of my house (cheeky!) as I was walking home. He glided down to the pond to fish and I tried to get closer for a better view but unfortunately surprised him and he flew up and sat on the top of a tall oak that overlooks the pond. Wrong Tree! He was met with immediate and sustained force from the pair of crows that are nesting there. They mobbed him for about a quarter of an hour before he eventually decided to vacate the area entirely. The crows appear to have put up a big metaphorical billboard stating-No Herons Permitted Here by order…
Love Sam x
Brilliant SamanthaStanley.
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Hi,
No (touching wood) she is very good at not digging holes, she likes to run round the garden like crazy instead! Yes I worry about Mr pussy cat too but we sit outside with her when we let her run around. Otherwise she is in her cage which had a run coming off it or indoors with us. How old are your bunnies?
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My neighbours have spotted hedgehogs (2 of them) in their garden last night - now planning on where to put hoggie sized access holes in the fence and picking a fetching shade of nail polish to make the snails super obvious. I’m hoping for hoglets!
(lily beetles are working their way through the fritillaries and the frog has disappeared so evidently it doesn’t find them tasty, back to the drawing board on that one then)
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Ooh I would so-ooo love to see hoglets! Good luck 
Love Sam x
We have an Abundance of bees in our garden. At the minute we don’t have any plants (terraced yard) but I saw a really good pin on pinterest that gave info on flowers that attract bees (I think the lady next door has many plants like this hence the bees) and I’m hoping to get some planted up as I’d love to help keep them going. We also have many woodlice my dog finds these particularly interesting
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Its really important for bees to be able to find food all year so plant up some winter flowering stuff if you can. The bees in my garden liked visiting the pieris, evergreen clematis and helibores over the winter so they are already regular visitors when I need them to pollenate my fruit trees in the spring. My pieris is in a pot in the sun and I’m sure helibores would be fine in pots in the shade (mine are in shade but in the ground)
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That’s good advice Sasha-I can’t comment on how well the hellebores will do in pots either, as mine are all planted in shade, but the bees do love them. Also ivy is extremely good for bees because it flowers in that period of time in Nov-Dec just before the hellebores. Beekeepers say that ivy honey is the last of the year, so I won’t argue with that!
Love Sam x
If there is anyone in or near Cambridge who would like some hellebore seedlings drop me a message. Don’t know if they will breed true but I think I have double white or single white with pink freckles available if any one wants (other wise they are going down the allotment). As my other plants mature there might be more colours in future years.
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