During the past week the pair of squirrels have been busy eating peanuts and burying some in the garden and this is where my first amusing story for the week comes. One squirrel was busy burying a peanut in one of my raised beds in the vegetable plot and one of the crows who comes to visit was sitting not very far away watching. The squirrel buried the nut and made off and then of course the crow hopped across to see if it could find the nut. It stirred the ground with its beak, jabbing away for a while, but was not successful as I guess the squirrel had buried its food a little bit further down and so the crow left for another food source.
At least one pair of wood pigeons is coming regularly to the garden now and the other day one landed on a very thin branch of the cobnut tree on its way to the feeder. The second wood pigeon appeared and landed on the branch as well and the first one looked across as much to say, ‘Watch it! We will be falling off here’.
The sparrows have been busy taking nesting material consisting of blades of grass and dried pieces of convolvulus vine into my neighbour’s roof space and I think they’re possibly still able to get into my roof cavity too. There was a hole in the wall which was remarked upon by a roofer last autumn, but I thought he probably would’ve blocked the hole off when doing the repairs, but I don’t mind if the sparrows still want to get into part of the cavity wall or roof.
The robins are much more in evidence and I think are now vying with one another for food and at times will be hopping about when the blackbirds are also coming for some of the robin type food. The starlings are certainly continuing to eat a lot from the suet squares and the mealworm supply and they’re also now coming for peanuts and some of the seed, which makes me think that perhaps they also are starting to nest.
Another watch it was me, as I was studying a bumblebee that was sitting on one of the garden walls late afternoon on a day which had been mild. I thought perhaps it might need a little bit of assistance as I’ve read that some sugary water is good for them to gain energy. I filled a shallow plastic lid from a container with some sugar and water and although it did put one leg in it was wary, so I poured some on the wall and the surface tension in the water kept it there for a while. The bee soon disappeared but not before I snapped this photograph. In the sunshine the other day there were certainly plenty of other bumblebees and other insects flying around so things are moving on even further into spring.
Written by Margaret Emerson
