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| Having thought we had had no Hedgehog sightings yet, the Trailcam proved me wrong. |
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| A chilly evening |
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| Fat Mouse (or a descendant) looking as cute as ever |
Have you been watching 'Attenborough's Secret garden: the Wildlife on our Doorstep'? The mouse narrative in the episode we watched tonight was extraordinary, not forgetting the Swallows.
Previous post: an Adder at Minsmere - here.
We are so thrilled to be having regular hedgehog visits to our suburban garden once again. We guess it is the same hedgie who comes most evenings. A couple of nights ago, its visit coincided with loud screeches from the Tawny in the wood.
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| It seems the hedgehog is finding some good-sized snails ... |
The photo below shows one of the other visitors ...
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... Above: close-up of the mouse.
And below: not on the trailcam, but who could resist this Robin?
What an age it seems since I last posted on this blog. There have been various reasons (largely Christmas plans and festivities); but here I am, emerging from a kind of hibernation and finding myself two days into the New Year!
We have been been keeping a sharp eye on our coconut feeders as a Sparrowhawk swooped right down a few weeks ago, and might well have ended up inside if our sliding doors had been open at the time. There were no casualties on that occasion, but the raptor came surprisingly close to the glass. Perhaps she noticed the butterfly stickers at the eleventh hour, which are supposed to warn birds to keep away from the window pane.
Since that hair-raising moment, we have had scores of Blue tits, good numbers of Great tits and Long-tailed tits. We have also had regular visits from a female Great Spotted Woodpecker, the one in the photo above. Well, yesterday we suddenly realised that the bird we were watching had a red nape. This means we have also have a male in our neck of the woods. Will there be young ones later on?
We were delighted to look out on 16 November, such a long time ago now, and find this Redwing enjoying the berries. We occasionally see these beautiful winter migrants in the garden. It is always a joy when we do.
And by the way, we checked on the Wasp-spider egg-sac just outside the glass door. It has survived the winter so far.
I look forward to finding new species in our wild garden this year. I wonder who will be first on the 2022 list ... Sadly we had no hedgehogs to report last year. When we first moved here to our Suffolk garden a decade ago, we had fairly frequent sightings, sometimes of a mother with young in tow. Let's hope we can somehow buck the current downward trend.
The Blackbirds seem to be the stars of our Trailcam show so far, at least during daylight hours. However, we think we may have caught a mouse on camera. I will post the photos below and you can decide for yourselves. The pictures are not very clear, I must admit, and it is quite possible that we have exercised rather too much imagination!
Since the mouse is, or would be, so tiny and possibly fairly hard to spot at the best of times, I have done a little cropping on Photoshop and have also indicated not only the (query) position of the mouse, but also the (side and frontal) view of it that we think we may see.
The camera shows that it was just below freezing when the camera clicked twice at 3.51 early this morning. It also definitely shows spots, which may or may not be eyes; and, of course, something must have triggered the camera in the first place while we were definitely indoors. It will be interesting to hear your views if you care to leave a comment! Alternatively you can cast a vote on my Twitter poll over the next 24 hours.
