Slugs and snails by night

A couple of weeks ago, when I went outside to feed our rabbits one evening, soon after it had rained, I noticed a large number of slugs and snails on the ground. I went back inside to get my camera and went back outside again. I took the photos below:

It was quite strange to see such a large group of them, even on a rainy night. It was hard to avoid standing on them as they were all on the garden path. Some of them had some really interesting colours too.

I know this has been the first post in a while, but with the good weather we are promised for the rest of this week, hopefully I can do some garden birdwatching. Around our area, the birds have been feeding fairly consistantly throughout the summer and the feeders haven't really been quiet at all recently. One last note: sorry for not commenting and visiting your blogs as much as usual recently. I will get back to it.

Not just the birds that like it

In the evenings, I lock our pet rabbits up in their hutch for the night to prevent them from being eaten by foxes. It was an average evening at about 10:00pm and I spotted some blobs on the fat block feeder. I shone my torch on them to get a better view only to see that they were actually snails!

Above: plenty of snails, earwigs and woodlice (Not for the squeamish type)

And there weren't just snails either. Earwigs and woodlice too. Its lucky they were snails, because it gave me a chance to get my camera before they disappeared. Its a wonder I had never noticed them before. I'm not sure if this has been known to happen before, but I must admit that I never knew that some of our bird food was being eaten by snails. They obviously have similar tastes to our garden birds. There were quite a few of them too. They must only eat very tiny portions of it though because in the morning, I could honestly not notice that any of the fat had gone. I thought that snails were only interested in green plants in the garden. Clearly not!

I have seen some of our daytime pests, eg squirrels. I am guessing that these snails, earwigs and woodlice are trying to avoid being eaten by their predators. The squirrels certainly make themselves obvious by rustling loudly in the trees and scaring the birds off. The creatures seem to be a bit more discreet. If you look carefully, you will spot some woodlice on the fence in the picture below.

Please comment if you have had any similar experiences. I definately found this strange.