Saturday 20 July 2013

It's been a while

It has been fairly quiet around the garden of late probably because I've stopped putting out so much food. This isn't deliberate cruelty but because the minute I put anything out it is devoured by rapacious jackdaws and I'm getting fed up of that.

There have been other reasons, as the photo to the right indicates. I was lucky to get this - I was washing some dishes and spotted this sparrowhawk sitting up on a neighbour's chimney stack quietly watching over the gardens. That would explain the almost complete silence that had fallen around the place as well. I took this from the back door at the far end of a zoom lens and have cropped it quite severely for posting here.

Not putting out food, especially set balls,seems to have been enough to stop visits from teh Great Spotted Woodpecker that had been coming around. That's a shame but, on the other hand, the jackdaws weren't leaving it any food anyway.

On the other hand, a couple of weeks ago I was out in the garden and heard a racket of gulls overhead. Like an idiot I didn't look up for a while to see what was going on. The photo to the left was a bit of a grab shot and has also been cropped quite severely for posting.

The noise was from seagulls mobbing a common buzzard which coasted around for a while before flying off in search of a quieter life.

It is nice that the buzzards are still around but they are nowhere near as frequent visitors as in the last couple of years.

Also noticeable has been an absence of wasps when I've been sitting out. This is due, I suppose, to a cold wet summer last year and a false spring followed by a late chill this year. I can't say I'm complaining but it has been noticeable enough to remark upon.