wildlife in the garden

Only lots of birds now I don't have a cat. the blackbirds love apples, don't they. Used to get frogs or toads but haven't seen any for a while. And I've got an old brick incinerator next to the bird table [my ex husband built it to burn garden rubbish, but it didn't work very well] and a small furry creature sneaks out of it at night to steal the bird food. Probably a rat! There's a walk I do with the dog; on a bend in the lane I once saw a fox and , a few minutes later a badger..the dog got very excited when she walked past it the other day, so I would imagine they're still there. I understand that foxes and badgers do share sets sometimes?

We get fruit bats and possums that eat my paw paws, but they leave enough for us. We have lots of birds, I particularly like the lorikeets. There are lots of sulphur crested cockatoos flying over, but their noise is awful. I like seeing honey eaters hanging upside down eating my bottle brush flowers.

.You don't live in Surbiton, then!...what about spiders Joan? We've all heard tales of the ones that lurk under toilet seats.....

Ah yes there's a song about a redback on the toilet seat, but that was in the days of outdoor dunnies.

The worst spiders are not in SE Queensland where I live - they are more of a southern thing. We do have snakes though. I rarely see them in my garden, but when I do I ignore them and they ignore me. The first day we arrived here some friends took us for a drive in the country. My husband got out of the car for a pee, and chose to pee on a large brown log - which wriggled away in disgust. Our horrified friend, Ken, told him he'd just peed on (and no doubt peed off) a huge poisonous brown snake.

Mosquitoes are what I really hate - you end up all itchy. I'm very lucky in that I'm one of those people with very high resistance to infection so I never get mosquito borne illnesses such as dengue fever.

We get roe deer, almost daily (well, nightly), foxes (occasionally, thank goodness, as we have chickens; we do actually like foxes but foxes and chickens don't mix very well or, rather, don't live together very well; I'm sure chicken and foxes' stomachs mix very well indeed), hedgehog, brown long-eared bats and pipistrelles (in the loft), wood mice and bank voles, moles, grey squirrels, rabbits and common shrews. At the last count a year or so ago, we had 117 species of plant in the garden, the majority being wild/native, plus all the mosses and lichens I haven't identified yet, a large number of fungi and ferns (also not identified yet), and approx. 13 species of butterfly. Moths and other insects, e.g. various bees, spiders, beetles, dragonflies, etc., oh .... and several thousand midges. We also have frogs, common newts, and toads and my records over five years (BTO GardenBirdWatch) indicate that at least 58 species of bird visit or live in our garden. We love it.

This is a new garden...but near farms and farmland....delighted to find a slowworm in the new veggie beds yesterday. Bird life is pretty good about 38 species so far and a fox that passes through...we dont have chickens! Just lots of rabbits in the field next door.

I have 5 cats and 3 dogs, so not much wildlife in the garden itself ... although we do get squirrels, hedgehogs, frogs, toads and a wide variety of birds (including a beautiful pair of goldfinches).

I live opposite a large park though and there we often see muntjac, foxes and rabbits whilst out walking ... and at night the vixens often bring their cubs out to play

At work I have a well stocked bird table (I don't feed the birds at home - it's not fair to encourage them into the cats' range) and have been rewarded by a blackbird nest in the hedge this year ... they have just fledged and are soooo fat from all the mealworms I've been putting out for them LOL

We have deer that eat the roses, rabbits that eat anything newly planted, well they don't actually seem to eat it but just bite the main stem so that the top falls off - maddening! But I have been delighted to see several goldfinches since I started putting out niger seed. And this year for the very first time I heard a nightingale in the garden. So lovely I stayed outside for ages not wanting to go to bed and miss its song

We live four miles from the centre of one of the largest cities in England. We used to have a lot of foxes - I've had them sunning themselves at the bottom of my garden and DH would frequently see them early in the morning on his way to the bus stop, but there don't seem to be so many now. We live next to a large wood and I know there are badgers there and muntjac deer have been seen. I was stunned to see a badger walk across our patio one evening - by the time I had hissed at DH to come and see, brock was toddling off down the garden and disappeared into the hedge, leaving us both open mouthed. We have never seen one since. We had a sparrowhawk that used to come and roost in a large fir tree in the garden - so close you could almost see every beautiful feather. Oddly, this year we have seen no squirrels whereas they have been an absolute nuisance in previous years. Could the hard winter have done for them? In the summer we get bats flying around at dusk and later in the year tawny owls come out of the woods into the estate and hoot from the chimney pots!

I think we must have your squirrels artygran, they seem to get bolder every year. Keep stealing bird food in spite of squirrel baffles on the poles. Still don't know how he gets up there but I'll find out one day!

Yes, they certainly sound like my squirrels! And no, thankyou, I don't want the little blighters back!

Right now my garden seems to be awash with baby birds. Nothing rare, but I spent a happy half hour last evening watching a brood of baby blue tits try to master the seed feed. Much hysterical flapping and aborted landings! And the one who landed on the end of the perch and then spent several miniutes stretching towards the seeder hole, before realising that he could move his feet nearer - priceless!

Never heard a nightingale, but the blackbird who sits on the top of the apple tree and sings to end the day - and again at 4.30am to herald the dawn has the most beautiful range of liquid and gurgling notes. Heaven.

This year for the first time we had orange tip butterflies in the spring. Used to have a summer bat roost in our oak tree but I think the cold winters have done for them, which makes me very sad.

After thirty years of working indoors, I am relishing the opportunity to get to experience of the seasons and I'm amazed at how things move on from day to day. I'm learning that there are outdoor pleasures that don't need warm sunshine!

I put some niger seed in a feeder the other day and because there was only a little left over in the bag I put it in the tray on the feeder pole. A very young sparrow came down to investigate and decided it wasn't to eat but to bath in, treating it just like a dust bath for his feathers! I love the way they sit with open beaks and flap their wings when the parents are around with food. We have been short on butterflies so far this year - last year we had red admirals, peacocks, gatekeepers and even a few painted ladies. May be a bit early here yet though.

We have swifts in our garage who come back every year and rear 2 sets of young before going (and leaving a mess behind) and last night we had a visit from a hedgehog - they don't normally make themselves known and as it was still light I fear he may not have been well. My husband followed him down to the bottom of the garden where he disappeared under one of the outbuildings. We have a field at the bottom of the garden and we're hoping he went in there as we have 2 dogs, a collie who wouldn't harm him and a westie who most definitely would. Good luck little hedgehog! We always know when the hedgehogs are about as the westie makes such a racket we have to go out to him. (both dogs are accommodated outside of the house). We've had a variety of wildlife (mainly birds, the occasional owl and a pair of doves) over the years, a regular visit from a fox when we kept ducks and chickens and a couple of lionhead rabbits who used to think they could come and go as they pleased, always escaping and returning when they were hungry (not sure if they count as wildlife, but they did their own thing)

grannydjs, glad about your swifts. We used to have eight pairs of housemartins but we think the ash cloud did for them the spring of 2010 (either that or some other problem that wiped out the group) so, although we do see housemartins about, they are not 'ours'. I guess all the nests will be repopulated at some point but we do miss them meantime. I have, however, recently seen a clutch of fledgling swallows and I know some swifts are nesting in a roof nearby.

We have a cat, but I do feed the birds as the cat is 13 and not really bothered about chasing after them. We have a visiting peacock (he lives in the tree at the bottom of next door's garden) and he wanders round all our gardens (everybody feeds him). We did have one incident with Pip (the peacock) and a marauding fox, but there was a tremendous noise from Pip and he flew up on to a neighbour's roof!

My bird feeders provide me with endless amusement - we have bullfinches, chaffinches, gold finches, greenfinches, blue tits, great tits, coaltits, blackbirds, dunnocks, etc. (And pigeons which drive me mad).

We did not have many birds in the garden at all last year, but this year they seem to have returned. We have always put out seed (niger for the finches) and water and recently we have been well rewarded. We also grow lots of sunflowers and the green and gold finches go mad for the seed in the Autumn. We have a pair of blackbirds who are nesting very close, greenfinches,chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, sparrows, a robin (in the winter) and starlings (most comical birds) Also we have feral pigeons who spend all their time mating! And I always tell them 'get a room' dont do it on my lawn where I can see you!(How do you discourage your pigeons GillieB) Visitors also include,various sorts of sea gulls, some the size of chickens, jackdaws, jays and magpies (after the eggs and fledglings) and a sneaky sparrowhawk who appears as if by magic and takes birds from off our lawn, and calmly plucks them before taking them away and leaving a pile of feathers and gore on the grass. Sometimes we find evidence of a fox, and hedhogs also. We do not have a cat, but there are 2 next door, but we do not encourage them! (Water pistols are effective!)

Living in London with tiny garden we don't get many birds. Usually seagulls,(not far from the Thames) pigeons and we do have a robin. On my walks in Battersea Park along the river I regularly see a cormorant.

gma - I wish I knew how to get rid of the wretched pigeons, but nothing seems to work and my husband says (and, of course, he is right) that as long as I feed the birds I have to accept that I will get pigeons.

Yes GillieB my husband says the very same, I will just have to speak nicely to the Sparrowhawk!!

We have a good variety of garden birds, squirrels and a hedgehog who has lived in our compost bin for a couple of years. We see him (or her) almost every night and keep hoping to see some little hoglets.

Saw my first ever fritillary butterfly today in the garden. It seems most likely to have been a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Boloria selene) but I didn't get a close enough look to be sure.

Last year I had a first too: a Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas).

Meanwhile the bees in my bedroom chimney have taken over. Something fell in the chimney last night (old soot??) and today the bees have found a way into the bedroom. I've opened the window and shut the door. May have to sleep in a different room tonight.

Those bees sound really scary Baggy.

I've just realised how careful you have to be with chemicals. Had an ant invasion just inside and outside the kitchen door. Sprayed them with Raid and just noticed my little robin (my) had flown down and was about to eat the dead ones! They have got young ones out there at the moment so that could have been nasty.

The bees aren't really scary. They're a bit lost, poor things, having swarmed into our chimney ten days ago. Since then they don't seem to have been foraging much, just milling about. Just went up to my bedroom and there are 22 dead ones on the floor and a lot of busy buzzing from the fireplace. They're getting in under the skirting board. We'll have to fill that gap in when they settle down or leave. They'd be scary if we uncovered the fireplace, I guess, because there are thousands of them!!!! Hoping they'll re-swarm and move away rather than die there.