Wildlife in the garden

Photo © T W Photos 2016

One of the most wonderful things about our garden is its wildlife. From the exotic yet commonplace ring-necked parakeets, to grey squirrels and foxes, to greenfinches, chaffinches, robins and blackbirds, collared doves, wrens and sparrows, it’s like an urban wildlife sanctuary.

Our North London Victorian terrace backs on to another long road of Victorian terraces. Gardens are approx. 40 ft long and many of them have mature trees. The result is a de facto nature reserve. The fact that many people’s fences are a bit dilapidated also helps create a ‘wildlife corridor’ effect – we frequently hear (and sometimes see) foxes in the garden; we haven’t seen a hedgehog yet.

We divide responsibilities pretty well in our household. My husband is extremely good at feeding the birds. We have a number of hanging feeders and he even built a bird table for the less acrobatic birds like our collared dove couple. He also regularly fills (and cleans) the bird bath. This is clearly much appreciated by the birds, who are often seen gulping the water or giving themselves a good old shower.

Planting more plants has definitely encouraged the birds, and our chaffinch family are often seen pottering around the primroses looking for food, along with robins and blackbirds. Blue tits and wrens enjoy hopping all over the beautiful jasmine that sprawls across a side fence. We recently saw a goldcrest there too.

Less welcome are feral pigeons – though they do hoover up any seeds that drop from the bird feeders. We have tried various tactics to deal with them, not least to appease the neighbour who complained about them sitting on his roof. We laid an enclosed gravel bed under the bird feeders to hamper movement. This has resulted in gladiator-like stand-offs between pigeons inside and outside of the new ‘arena’ and Benny-Hill style pigeon chases around it.

A man at the local garden centre suggested investing in a plastic sparrow hawk to deter the pigeons, but we haven’t quite got round to that. The best deterrent for a while was a local cat that left one of the pigeons with a bloody leg. We chased the cat away and harboured the pigeon in a box overnight with food and water. We were relieved that it was fine, but secretly pleased that the cat had scared them a bit. Still, they now seem to have forgotten that incident and have returned, though in smaller numbers.

Cats themselves are generally a bit of a nuisance as well, not only when they are ogling the birds, but also when they leave little gifts around the garden. We have tried a number of things –the Silent Roar, banana skins, etc. Possibly the best effect has been from the cat repeller rods, but we are not sure why. In any case we like to see them now and again, just to keep the pigeons on their toes.

We also get slugs in abundance. Before we replaced our old back door, we had a big problem with them getting under it and leaving silver dance trails across the kitchen floor. We have tried a lot of things to protect our garden from slugs. Being organic and generally humane gardeners we tried copper tape and wool pellets, with varying degrees of success. The internet offers lots more tips and advice. I’m almost looking forward to the slug season starting up again …

As I wrote last week, our squirrels love to eat crocus bulbs and they have probably eaten some of our tulip bulbs, as well as eating off the heads of our tulips before they have even matured. They have also launched frenzied attacks on our new camellia (something I realised was not unusual after checking online). One of them even took one of the camellia flowers and stuck it up a tree, something that baffled us for several hours until we saw the second attack.

Squirrels also hog the bird feeders and that can be annoying too. They are extraordinarily athletic and intelligent, though, and it’s fascinating to see them try to access the squirrel-proof feeders. One of the designs has a mechanism that closes off the seeds if someone over a certain weight tries to eat the seeds. One squirrel succeeded by hanging from the bird feeder support pole and pulling the feeder towards itself to avoid putting its weight on the feeder. (To be fair the RSPB does warn about that possibility …)

However, since the incident with the dwarf narcissus that I mentioned last week, we have seen much less of our squirrels, and not in groups of three, just isolated showings. This leads me to conclude (optimistically) that the shock of the toxic bulbs has put them off our garden for a while. I hope it is not anything more serious. In the meantime, though, the food in the bird feeders is certainly lasting longer than usual …