Insect Takeover

The young birds in the garden now seem pretty self sufficient and it is all a lot quieter. The exception to this is the Magpie family and they are still going around like a group of hooligans hell bent on destroying the runner bean supports and the garden chairs by pulling at any loose thread. If one manages to get a bit of thread or anything else interesting they all chase it madly round and round the garden. They also desperately want to be like the smaller birds and eat from the feeders but they only manage to hold on for a couple of seconds during which time they gobble like mad...very amusing to watch.

Where the birds have quietened down the insects have taken over. The bumble bee's nest that the fox uncovered a few weeks back is thriving. The only problem being that it is right in the middle of the lawn. We also have a wasps nest that is in an unfortunate place; in the rockery, right next to the bridge that hides our filter box that needs cleaning just about every day. It puts me in mind of when I saw a wasp flying around the wildlife pond with a red spot on its back. I was very excited and convinced that we had some rare species in the garden but when my boys got back from school they informed me that they had marked the wasp with a little dollop of paint so they could monitor where it flew. I felt sure they were destined for jobs in wildlife conservation but both went into computing.

The other problem insects that we have are the grasshoppers and crickets. We have a fly curtain at the patio door that is made out of lots of little bits of bamboo on strings but when they blow together it makes a clickety noise that attracts the crickets and grasshoppers so we are forever having to turf the little hoppers out of our breakfast room. We will definitely have to buy a new fly curtain. This little chap hadn't got that far and was well camouflaged amongst the weeds in our lawn.

Bird Battles

For those of you that get lots of Starlings in your gardens you would probably be surprised that I was not 100% sure that this was a baby Starling. There were no parent birds around and I didn't realize juveniles were so brown. I sort of guessed it was a Starling by its walk but was pleased to have it confirmed after watching a video on MIDMARSH JOTTINGS' blog. Obviously there are adult Starlings around nearby so I wonder why they don't come into my garden.

Just about every other bird has been paying us a visit along with their broods of youngsters. The garden seems like a bird version of Piccadilly Circus with all the comings and goings.

The Magpies have taken command of the ground and go around in a gang, like delinquent teenagers, terrorising everything and trying to undo the string that holds the runner bean canes together. Even the Pheasants get their tails pulled.

The feeding tree has become the domain of the Woodpecker family. They don't mind the smaller birds but hate the Parakeets and there are frequent wing flappings and squawkings as they argue it out. Once the Woodpeckers have driven the Parakeets away they seem to like to show their supremacy by drilling a few more holes in the poor old tree. I don't think the tree will survive for much longer.

There is so much going on I think I could happily spend all day just watching at the window but despite the hot weather I am still trying to do at least one walk a day. Today I chose a nice shady bridleway to wander down but other than lots of butterflies and a vole there wasn't much going on. I think everything was sitting sensibly in the shade taking it easy which is probably what I should have been doing as I got very hot. So something to cool down with; this is a picture of the same bridleway that I walked down today but when the photo was taken, only a few months ago, it was below freezing:-)

Cheeky Squirrels

A lot of people don't like the Ring Necked Parakeets that have colonised in some areas of England because they are not native but I find them very entertaining and contrary to rumors I find they get on just fine with the smaller birds and I regularly watch them sharing the feeder with blue tits and finches. The thing that the parakeets really dislike though are the squirrels and as the picture below shows they get very cross when the squirrel hogs the feeder.

The squirrels can also be very entertaining, although, also a little annoying as they eat the bird food so quickly that it costs me a fortune keeping the feeders topped up. Luckily we only ever seem to have two or three squirrels at one time. They can be very cheeky and besides upsetting the parakeets they love to taunt the pheasants.

The squirrels aren't as bad as the young Magpies for teasing male pheasant though. They just love to try and pull out his lovely long tail feathers. The pheasant never seems to retaliate he just walks around with a Magpie hanging off his tail...very amusing...one day I will manage to catch it on camera.