Hi Nic
Hooray, a hog has returned to your garden! Hopefully by now some hoglets too, that would be lovely. Frogs seem to like your set up, it sounds perfect with all the grass & the pond, front & back doing wildlife a big favour with water in one & vegetation in both. I won’t mention cats…
Starlings have made the occasional appearance, sparrows in their multitudes still have attracted the attention of a pair of sparrowhawks. Hubby was recording the sparrows on the feeder last week when they suddenly fled en masse & a sparrowhawk shot into view landing on the fence wings outstretched a split second after a lone sparrow went through it. It was a male but I’ve since (& a few weeks ago) seen a female sat on the fence by the feeder too. Spectacular birds, easier to see as quite close to the house now it’s been extended.
I set up the cameras one day last week & spotted some small hogs visiting on the footage, they look as if they’ve had a close haircut next to an adult because the spines are so short in comparison maybe. Nice to see them anyway, lots of activity & putting extra food out lately as all of the Tesco kitten biscuits are being eaten every night front & back. A good year for hogs but I’d like to know where their safe place is to spend the day & where they intend over wintering too. Nobody is using Frankie’s kennel, been many months since there was any sign of it being sheltered in.
Interesting to see the multiple entry & exit points between my garden & the 3 surrounding it. One of the gardens is a stark mix of concrete slabs & gravel with no greenery at all except in one very high raised bed of a few plants, one is very overgrown with heaps of cut & left to rot piles of greenery – heaven for shelter & food I’d think though I don’t appreciate the brambles that are coming through into my garden, the other is a lawn with a few plants from my garden that have migrated through the fence! Worryingly the lawn is spasmodically cut & a strimmer used at the edges despite my warnings about hogs, the overgrown one is strimmed about once a year but half heartedly which is just as well as they don’t listen to warnings either. You can see the giveaway signs where hogs travel, it’s an education to see how small a gap they need to make their way under fences, leaving poo, a dip in the soil, gravel from the garden they’ve been in, a line of trampled plants, to name but a few of their hoggy marks.
Hope you have some activity to report!
