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| Photo: Les Roberts |
Writing an occasional blog about the wildlife seen in our garden may give the impression that the garden is large. It isn’t. But of course we connect to our neighbours' plots and, seen from the air, a substantial green area emerges which even has links to the Wirral Way, the Dee marshland and local farms.
This area must provide quite a varied habitat of crops, trees, shrubbery, grass, flowers and ponds. Alongside this the Dee runs through an open and sizeable saltwater estuary and, most notably, is home to thousands of birds – and plenty of rodents. No surprise then that foxes, hedgehogs, squirrels, frogs, newts and, of course, birds, find their way into our patch from time to time.
March has seen the pond once again occupied by a good population of tadpoles. But our impression is that the spawning this year has been less prolific than in the past. A youngish fox is starting to make daily appearances and, if left undisturbed, spends considerable time hoovering up sunflower seeds dropped from the birdfeeders. On a very sunny Wednesday we managed to take some long distant photos.
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| Photo: Les Roberts |
This reminds me that last year we were surprised to see a sparrowhawk sitting in the corner of the lawn making no move to fly away even when we went to the windows to peep at it. We had time to fetch the camera and take a few slightly out of focus shots. I noticed that the bird had what we thought was an injured talon. It looked blobby red and was not being moved. As our thoughts turned to how we were to help, the hawk lifted the ‘damaged’ leg to reveal that it was holding, very firmly, the carcass of a small bird. Such is nature.
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| Photo: Les Roberts |
We hope you enjoy the pictures of the fox.........and forgive the sparrowhawk.
Les Roberts
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