Birds and Wildlife in your garden | Page 4 | Vital Football

Birds and Wildlife in your garden

This sparrow hawk was lying dead on our driveway this morning. It wasn't there when I went out. I guess it bumped into a window.

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If it’s a great crested newt they’re protected species, normally have to report if there is a colony
 
An overlap with the gardening thread: our bee count has gone up significantly since we got a lavender plant in a pot. They love it!
 
Not in the garden but just round the corner we disturbed a deer out for a walk. We seem to see more and more on them these days
 
Found quite a striking spider the other day. It had a bulbous white body with two jagged red lines along its length - turns out to be a common candy-striped spider. So common I've never seen one or even heard of it before!
 
Also spotted two jumping spiders on our shed today, not a type I've seen before. Both were a dark brown and camouflaged almost perfectly on the shed door. Need to find out what species they are.
 
That's a shame, must be one of the biggest birds I've heard of doing that (flying into a window).
Saying that, we had a bizarre incident like that a few months ago. The border to one side of us is made up by the neighbour's house - it extends back a long way from the road to partway along our garden. No windows anywhere on the side facing us. I was outside and a pigeon flew from the opposite side and smack into the middle of this 3-storey wall as if would normally fly through there unrestricted, and it seemed to be going full pelt. Needless to say it broke its neck and I was quite perplexed. It also landed right where we had just built our raised bed the day before and having dug up some bones and teeth (which we had to have checked by the police to ensure they weren't human), I was starting to think we had invoked a curse or something!
 
More on-topic, I recently was told about a free app called Seek which helps identify plants and animals. You either use an existing photo on your phone, or use the camera via the app to look at something in real time and it can usually identify what it is. Might be of some help if you have any unknown plants or beasties in your garden.
 
Saying that, we had a bizarre incident like that a few months ago. The border to one side of us is made up by the neighbour's house - it extends back a long way from the road to partway along our garden. No windows anywhere on the side facing us. I was outside and a pigeon flew from the opposite side and smack into the midde of this 3-storey wall as if would normally fly through there unrestricted, and it seemed to be going full pelt. Needless to say it broke its neck and I was quite perplexed. It also landed right where we had just built our raised bed the day before and having dug up some bones and teeth (which we had to have checked by the police to ensure they weren't human), I was starting to think we had invoked a curse or something!

You need to be careful building a house on those ancient Navajo burial grounds, you know.
 
We had a very small butterfly in the garden yesterday, but haven't been able to ID it. Not there long enough to fetch the camera
 
You need to be careful building a house on those ancient Navajo burial grounds, you know.
It was like something out of a Blade film when it started bleeding all over the freshly-built wall we had just finished! We've put all the headdresses back now and said sorry.
 
More on-topic, I recently was told about a free app called Seek which helps identify plants and animals. You either use an existing photo on your phone, or use the camera via the app to look at something in real time and it can usually identify what it is. Might be of some help if you have any unknown plants or beasties in your garden.
I plugged this a few pages ago. I use it all the time, sometimes a bit odd as uses American names so told me a wasp was a yellowjacket. I'm up to 222 different species observed without really trying