Hi Annie
Good to hear from you. I have still stopped the hanging feeder and just put some food out first thing in the morning – other than when Mr. Blackbird makes his presence known, when he gets some more. He sometimes flies up to the eaves as soon as I open the curtains! I might try putting out some suet balls when the weather gets a bit cooler. There is also a naughty young blackbird who has been pecking the berries of my rowan tree (not ripe yet) and dropping them – also pulling up some of my fairly newly rooted cuttings from pots. I think he is from an earlier brood of Mr. Blackbird’s and seems to be quite tame.
I keep seeing gold finches eating the seeds off the knautia macedonica which I left and even saw a greenfinch the other day. Before that I hadn’t seen one for ages – even when the seed feeder was still there. I also see the sparrows quite often eating the grass seed on the unmown patches.
I haven’t seen ratty for a long time – always suspected it was the bird seed which attracted it.
Like you I get lots of birds in the bird baths. They seem to like having a communal bathe in the larger saucers. I do still get the starlings, but also at other times lots of sparrows.
Sadly round frog died. Luckily it got out of the pond first, so didn’t contaminate it. I haven’t seen any other frogs recently, but the vegetation has all grown up a bit, so they wouldn’t be so easy to see. But I did see a young one near the water butts (a bit away from the ponds) a while back, which was nice to see.
There are martins using at least one of the nests. I keep meaning to sit out there and see if any others are being used, but never seem to think of it at the right time. There seem to be quite a few around, but some others nearby have also put up some nests, which is good.
I’ve given up scattering the kitten biscuits at the moment as I was getting too many cats eating them and the current hogs that visit will go in the feed boxes (which the cats gave up trying to get into). I hope saying that doesn’t mean a cat manages to get in tonight! Although I haven’t seen one for several days now. But hog numbers are down a bit at the moment.
How funny that hogs’ reaction to being confronted by your toes. It always surprises me that they don’t notice before they actually get to them!
