Ginger's Op.

In my post dated 30th April I wrote about Ginger guinea pig needing an expensive operation to remove a bladder stone. Today was operation day but although the stone is still showing up on x-rays, when the vet opened Ginger up, she was unable to locate it, so he's been through all that trauma for nothing. Tomorrow pictures of the x-rays (£800 worth!) are being sent to a specialist to see if he can say where the stone is (thankfully we are not being charged for all these additional cost). Even if the specialist can locate it more accurately I am not sure it is fair to put Ginger through yet another operation, although he doesn't seem too bad after this one, just very hungry. I really don't know what to do for the best.

As I am writing this I am half watching a fox that is acting very strangely... one minute it is at the top of the field but the next time I look up it is at the bottom, then it is back up at the top again and so on. Very odd. I think I will forgo my game of chess with the computer and watch it for a while through the binoculars.

Wildlife Returns

After commenting on the lack of wildlife visiting the garden in my last post, things have suddenly started to look up but sadly not altogether in a nice way.

A couple of days ago, I was just settling down for my lunch when I noticed something flash past the patio doors. On investigation I found it to be a very thin and very mangy fox who was searching the garden for food. Unfortunately I haven't seen him again so not much I can do to help him. I hope it wasn't the handsome fox that used to trot through the garden last year.

I think I have solved the mystery of my missing snowdrops. I used to have quite a few planted around the lower fish pond but this year only one has appeared. However yesterday I saw a rather plump vole running around the rockery that surrounds the pond and judging by his size I'm guessing he has been enjoying a snowdrop salad:-) I don't mind at all as I have quite a few primroses that are adding a nice touch of spring colour and he is very cute.

I am also pleased to say that at last we have some pheasants visiting us again.

Foxy Lady gets Fish

I always find it difficult to decide what to do when I find one of my fish looking very ill and at death's door. Do I leave it in the pond and risk infecting the others if it has something catching or do I take it out and bang it on the head to save it suffering or do I take it out and put it somewhere else where it can die peacefully on its own?

Yesterday I found one of my fish looking in a very bad way so I thought I would put it out of its misery but when I went to pick it up it swam away so I decided to put it in a bucket with pond weed and Lilly Pads to shelter it and wait to see if it would improve.

In the evening I checked on it on route to fill up the bird feeders and it wasn't looking too good and by the time I returned from the feeders it appeared to have died but I thought I would leave it in the bucket overnight as I didn't want to disturb it if there was still a bit of life left.

Next morning I got up at 5.30 am to find the bucket on its side and the weed strewn across the garden. I went out to look for the fish but couldn't find it anywhere and then 5 minutes later female fox came into the garden and went straight to an area under some trees where she dragged out my fish and proceeded to eat it.

I am always amazed at how good a fox's sense of smell is; the bucket with the fish in it had been well tucked away but Foxy still managed to smell it out. I have had similar examples of their very efficient noses when our first hen died and we buried it deeply at the end of the garden but a fox still smelt it out and by morning there was nothing left but a big hole.

Poor old fish...I am certain it would have been dead by the time the fox found it and at least the fox went away happy with a full tummy.

Badger or Fox?

This evening the garden and valley have been very still, no wind and no wildlife. Evenings like this tend to leave me feeling a bit flat, although, tonight, the absence of wildlife was probably down to me.

Around 6.30pm I had suddenly realised my cat Lizzy was missing. She is 18 yrs old with a thyroid problem and never ventures far from the bungalow these days. The furthest she has been for many months is the veg. patch, so I was very worried. My family and I all separately checked the garage and shed as both had been opened when my husband had mown the lawn earlier. Then we searched the whole garden, front and back, and then the field right up to the woods, calling her name all the time. After about an hour of this I thought I would check the garage again and thankfully there she was waiting at the door to be let out. I was sooo relieved, however, I am guessing that all the calling has put the wind up the creatures that usually venture our way.

I had hoped to see the foxes because I was keen to know if they were responsible for a fairly large deep hole that had been dug in the middle of the lawn and which had a scent mark dropping in it. Later on when I went to fill it in I discovered that it was actually the entrance to a bumble bees nest which either a fox or badger had been trying to get at (needless to say I didn't fill in the hole).

The badgers tend to visit the garden later at night and since our security light has broken it is usually too dark to see them (must get round to buying a new one). There is a strain of albino badger around this part of Biggin Hill and for several years we had one visiting the garden.

Even though I can't see the badgers at the moment I always know when they have visited the garden because of the numorous holes they leave behind but I have never noticed droppings in them before so I am thinking that it was the fox that was after the bumbles.

Spring

Spring is such a nice time of year. There is so much new life, so many new plans and anything and everything seems possible with the summer ahead. I love hanging out the washing and hearing the skylarks high above me and the lambs calling on the hill and feeling the warmth of the sun on my back but I have to do this before 9 o'clock as this is when Biggin Hill Airport comes alive and then the lovely country sounds are interrupted by noisy planes taking off.

Unfortunately spring has its sad moments too. A young dog fox that left its family home down the valley to make way for new cubs and that we often see in or near our garden has been injured. He is quite mobile so there is little I can do to help him as I don't think he could be caught. I will just keep an eye out for him and hope he recovers on his own...maybe I'll put a bit of cat food out to make his life a little easier while he is poorly. Then, this morning while I was watching the fox, a fledgling bird flew into our window and died. Very sad as it was probably on its maiden flight. We don't often have birds flying into the windows anymore since I have stuck fluorescent butterflies on them but I guess this little bird hadn't quite learnt to control his direction.

Another nice part of spring is being able to move the seedlings out of the greenhouse and into the veg patch. The veg garden is really my husband's province but after temporarily taking over last year while he was decorating our bedroom I found I quite enjoyed aspects of it. The trouble is, just like my cooking, I have no idea of quantity and plant far too much so like last year the greenhouse is fit to burst and I don't think it will all fit into the veg patch. We have therefore decided that to make more room we will put some of the more robust vegetables amongst the plants in the flower bed and the purple kale will definitely be one that goes there as when it goes to seed it produces an abundance of very attractive flowers.

I have just come back from a walk down to the SSSI area of chalk downland that was cleared using heavy farm machinery at the beginning of the year and it is a complete mess. Needless to say most of the hawthorn is re-growing. I was told that English Nature had paid £25,000 to have this work done!

Dawn and Dusk

I love the early mornings. I don't like the getting up but once I am out of bed I always feel a flutter of excitement as I draw back the living room curtains to see what's going on in the valley. It is a bit like unwrapping a present, you are never sure what will be in it but it is usually something good. Dawn and dusk are good times to see wildlife as it is quiet and the animals are usually a bit braver and hugry. This morning there was a young dog fox snuffling for mice in the field which, as he was only a few feet away from my friendly pheasant, was a bit worrying but they seemed to have an understanding as both ignored the other.

I don't wake up easily for these dawn experiences but this is where one of our most important residents comes in useful and that is my cat Lizzy. She is 18 years old and has been with us, from a kitten, for nearly half our married life and most of the children's lives. She has no tail due to an argument with a car when she was two and she has a bald patch round her neck due to an allergic reaction to a flea collar. She always wakes at first light and thinks that I should also be up making her breakfast and over the years she has developed various ways of making me oblige; she meows, she stomps on me, head butts me, gives me horrible wet kisses, combs my hair with a paw that has probably just come out of the cat tray and if that fails she will systematically knock everything off of my bedside table. When she was younger I could happily push her off but now she is so old and stiff I can't do that so I get up and we enjoy the early morning together.

Dusk is also a favourite time of day for me and I usually find myself gazing out of the window instead of watching the TV. It is a good time to spot roe deer as they creep out of the wood to graze and with the warmer weather our bats have usually awoken from their winter sleep in the fir tree but this year I have only seen one so I think the others may have succumbed to the freezing winter weather we had. Very sad.