COUNTRY LIFE

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This page and its linked stories, lists and pictures tell you something about our experience of living in the country.

We wanna enjoy the gardin

Presumably because it is so open and so close to fields and woods, the garden is a mecca for birds and animals, including squirrels, rabbits, a fox and (token picture below) a muntjac deer.

NB You can click on this thumbnail for a larger image but you'll still have to take our word for it that the smudge at the end of the garden is a Muntjac deer. There is a much better picture of what we saw in this downloadable leaflet (195KB) from the British Deer Society.

Sadly no picture yet of the fox. Just a few brief visits (first on 16/1/04) when the security light picks out a plump, brush-tailed, fiery auburn visitor sniffing around under the bird table and then running into the border. We are hoping for a longer return visit.

We get quite a few rabbits. Usually they come in alone and quietly lollop and eat their way across the garden. But they decided to celebrate Mo's birthday on 22/12/04. Three were suddenly illuminated by the security light on the garden and spent a few minutes dancing round each other in a series of overlapping figure eights before heading back to the borders and out of the light. Wonderful!

Soggy squirrel.

S/he and his/her friends are VERY frequent visitors - not surprising given all the free food on offer.

There are so many birds they can empty a feeder full of peanuts within a few days (with a little help from the squirrels). And there are so many different types we've never seen before Steve has started (in the most amateur and non-twitchy way possible, of course) to watch and try to identify them. If you are of an ornithological bent, there is a list of what (he thinks) has visited so far.

Captured on a misty morning, this is the greedy heron who emptied the fish pond! Now it's just a pond.

We've had two years of bluetits nesting in the birdbox and producing young but, both times, missed the fledglings leaving the nest, never to return.

Woodpeckers stick around for much longer, with Daddy apparently taking most of the responsibility for feeding the youngster out of the nest. In the first picture he has brought junior to the bird table so he can operate a sort of peanut feeding conveyor belt. I was going to call it "Father and son" - a little twee perhaps. Mo came up with "A pair of redheads" - much better. The second picture clearly shows the playful youngster hiding and his dad calling out to him.

Apart from the pheasants (see next), rooks are the biggest bird to visit. When they do come it's mob-handed and often with jackdaws and magpies tagging along. Considering they are all such large and cheeky birds, they are astonishingly jumpy. They creep in, twitching and crouching, barely (if at all) snatching a piece of food before running or flying off with it, and they all bolt at the first sign of human movement.

A pheasant's tale

Pheasants are the largest birds to visit the garden and the males make a stunning sight. They are fiercely territory-possessive loners but their women and children visit en masse: 10 in this case! It's not all roses though, as this short story shows.

We like to think of them as the poor man's peacock. They strut round the 'grounds' looking so impressive but we didn't import them from India and we don't pay for their upkeep (though, to be fair, we do contribute as it keeps them coming in).

This last picture shows what we think was a proud young adolescent male and a once proud, no longer at his peak (and perhaps not much longer for this world), male with a bad leg. We said earlier that the males are fiercely territorial, and you don't usually see two together. If one spots another in the garden it will come running in at full pelt and there will be a squawking chase round the garden until one gives way and flies off. This time, though, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding about the power relationship between them and they contentedly shared each other's space.

Sights and sounds

And what about the peace and quiet of the countryside? Read on.