The Natural History/Wildlife in Your Garden Thread

This little lad occasionally scoots across the path in our back garden. protected species, so we're avoiding using weedkiller for the path, and have been burning any weeds off instead to avoid harming him.

In our last garden there were hundreds of squirrels running up the trees and along the fences, it was lovely. New one has nothing but a fuckton of magpies. The local streets are covered in mouse corpses though, the neighbourhood cats don't do a good job of cleaning up after themselves.

Sammy the slow worm

Obviously - fucker hasn't moved the whole time i've been watching this vid!

Less appendages to be caught by, more silent movement, tricking other animals into being afraid of it, more energy efficient maybe? I dunno, but I would assume those are the reasons.

I think the slow worm is more tail than body while a snake is more body than tail, or that might be the other way round

First time I saw one I knew it was a legless lizard when it tried to make a pass at my missus, then started a fight with me before pissing in the flower bed.

Have you ever trod on a frog? Sounds exactly like a squeaky dog/kids toy

It's fucking weird. They used to live under our (very damp) decking. Scared the shit out of me.

We get these guys at the back of the garden eating the apples that fall from our tree.

Yeah it's cool. My little girl loves it, we get sheep and Horses there too when the farmer rotates them around.

It's not all good though. We've got a row of small box hedges, which have been utterly decimated by an infestation of moth caterpillars. Proper razed to the ground. RHS reckons they'll recover and not to kill the caterpillars (so we didn't). Not convinced though.

a few of the local Cubs playing tag

Ah man I wish we had fox cubs. I saw one in the garden once years ago but it was just passing through with its mum.

I saw my first parakeet in Reading the other week. I always see shitloads of them when I'm in London (you can feed them out of your hand in Kensington Gardens, which I try and make a point of doing when I have the opportunity). But yeah looks like they've spread out westwards. I for one welcome my new tropical flying rat overlords. Way more interesting that pigeons.