Garden update

We have really had plenty of action in our garden recently. On Thursday, I went out to take a few photos of the birds, who have been feeding frantically recently. The finches are arriving in large numbers at the moment, as are the sparrows, but the first bird I saw on Thursday was this cheeky little Blue Tit...

Also seen were these sparrows at the other feeding station in our garden.

Some of you may remember that we created a small pond in our garden, in the hope that the wildlife in our garden would use it. The pond now looks much more a part of the garden than it used to and really fits in well where it currently is. Below is a photo of the pond as it was when we first created it.

We added some pond weed and plants to surround it. Below is a photo of what the pond looks like now.

However, whilst the pond might look a lot better and attract more wildlife now, we have found that there is a bit of a problem with it. The pond appears to be leaking water into the soil. We have to fill up the pond once every day or two, which really isn't right. The pond is quite shallow, so we originally thought that the water was just evaporating away. But just recently, the weather has been cooler and yet the pond is leaking just as much as before. At some point, we may have to create this pond again so that it stops leaking.

Enough of that for now. In the last few weeks, we have seen glimpses of a little Wood Mouse in our garden shed. I have no idea how it got inside, or when but its definitely made its presence known. My Dad first saw the mouse as he opened the top drawer in a chest of drawers in our shed last week amongst loads of shredded paper. I think it may have been starting to nest! Below are the photos of the drawer. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a photo of the mouse.

A view of the draw with the shredded paper...

I even found that part of a fat block for the birds being stored in the shed had been nibbled by the mouse! See the picture below.

Hope you all had a great weekend :)

Summer memories

I thought I would post a couple of photos which I took in the summer in my Grandma's garden. I completely forgot about these few photos, and it was only until recently that I came across them again. Her garden was really colourful at the time, and the flowers were all out. In the summer sun, it looked brilliant...

As you can see from the photos, the flowers look stunning. They were on an arch at the end of the garden. The bees were loving them too. I think these are the only real decent photos I have taken of the bees. Sometimes, it is only when you look at the photos on the computer that you realise if the photo is any good. I'm not sure of the ID of the flowers, so any help on that would be great.

Its difficult to imagine what her garden looks like now in the autumn, without the bright colours which we saw in the summer. Because of the time of year, not much bird life was to be seen around her garden, except a few Dunnocks and Woodpigeons. Maybe the birds have started to visit her feeders again now that the days are cooler and shorter.

At home, we have really seen a lot of action on the bird feeders recently, and we have had to fill them up very regularly. Hopefully, our camera nestbox will be re-located to the end of the garden soon in case we get any roosting Blue or Great Tits as the weather gets cooler. I may soon talk of a certain visitor to our garden shed recently too.

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.