I’ve noticed in the last few evenings around twilight we have bats in the garden. First time I’ve seen them around here.
A neighbour tells me there is a young deer in the field next to us.
Apart from an occasional fox that’s our lot round here.
How’s your local wildlife?
Rigid Digit says
There’s a fox that wanders up and down the road some nights.
Mostly pigeons and the odd sparrow otherwise.
SteveT says
We have bats at this time of the year.
We have a barn owl that I have manged to see twice.
We also have badgers – saw once when we had to get up at 4am to go the airport.
I have also seen either a polecat or a weasel – not sure which.
retropath2 says
Sure it wasn’t a stoat?
mikethep says
Stoats are weaselly distinguished. Weasels are stoatally different. (Grandpa joke.)
Vulpes Vulpes says
Weasels are really tiny, like mice that have been on the rack, and they never have a black tip to their tails. Stoats are the same size as a polecat or ferret.
Moose the Mooche says
They might be tiny, but they can rip your flesh.
Moose the Mooche says
A fox comes across a path I use on the way to work, usually with a look on his face that says, fuck you doing here?
dai says
Deer, groundhogs, squirrels, chipmunks and the odd coyote. Occasionally moose and bears stray into the city, but I haven’t seen any
dai says
Wild rabbits too, saw a snake once
Guiri says
Here in the city mostly just sparrows, pigeons and endless dogs. In the pueblo things get a bit more varied with cats, swifts, bats, rabbits, lizards and even the occasional wild boar. Plus endless dogs.
Dave Ross says
Our house has access to the Jubilee River which gives us all the birdlife you’ll need. Herons, swans, ducks, geese and the occasional pheasant. The surrounding areas give us foxes, badgers, rabbits, muntjac deer but I’ve never seen a hedgehog sadly. The absolute pinnacle though is what I think is a barn owl I occasionally see at dusk. I’m very lucky…
aging hippy says
Not seen a live hedgehog since I was a kid. Unfortunately dead ones are not uncommon in these parts.
hubert rawlinson says
Buzzards, kestrels, sparrowhawks, the occasional kite, sat out in the summer listening to the bat on the bat detector. Various garden birds foxes and the neighbours heard snuffling in the garden coming from a hedgehog.
Pulled back the curtain one morning to find a tawny owl staring in from the tree opposite.
Chrisf says
Every morning at about 7am and evening about 7pm we have a huge flock of Myna birds that descend on the trees outside our apartments, making a lot of noise (for about 15 mins).
Even though we are a densely populated city, there is actually a lot of wild life – even around the housing. We regularly get bats, geckos, monitor lizards, Sea Eagles and various other birds of prey. Just up the road at the country club where I go for a swim, there are loads of iguanas (usually sat on the bridge by the entrance) and the occasional Wild Boar. Head down to the park nearby and you will usually see monkeys and sometimes Pangolins and various snakes (including Cobra’s !). Added to that there are a few “gangs” of Otters that roam around different areas of Singapore (and try and take over each other’s territory) after their successful reintroduction / protection.
Max the Dog says
Sounds great, Chris
Chrisf says
It is and i continue to be amazed by the fact we have wildlife that I have never heard of. Case in point, in one of todays local news sites, there was this about a “Coluga” which is some sort of flying primate,….
https://mothership.sg/2021/10/colugo-baby-parent/
GCU Grey Area says
We have a good variety of wildlife in our part of Somerset. We’ve a list of bird species we’ve seen in the garden and over the house, and I think there’s nearly a hundred. There’s probably been more, but when it gets down to LBJs (Little Brown Jobs), I get lost. Of those hundred, we’ve seen one Goldcrest, one Osprey and one Marsh Harrier.
Abundant House sparrows, which isn’t the case everywhere. The local Starlings have been joined by the first migrants, and there was a mini-murmuration two days ago around the village dairy farm. At their peak, I’d guess there are a couple of thousand at this one place. They roost there, and don’t join the huge flocks out on the Levels, as far as I can see.
Lots of Pied wagtails around now; Sainsburys car park is very popular.
We used to have Lizards in the garden wall, but I haven’t seen one for ages; where they are/were has little intervention from us, so they may well be. We have frogs and toads and the neighbour’s small pond has newts.
Our other neighbour has both Adders and Grass snakes in his very large compost heaps. I’ve seen several dead ones on the lanes, but have only seen one live Grass snake; it was about to cross the road near us, and I got off the bike and stopped the traffic for it.
Max the Dog says
There’s a lot of horses around our village (part of the equestrian industry so that doesn’t exactly fit in with Edgar’s brief) so I usually carry some pieces of carrot or apple when out walking. I can hear foxes at night but rarely see them. Lots of birds, especially crows. To my shame, I’d be hard pressed to identify most types of bird. I used to often encounter hedgehogs when out with the eponymous dog at night. I’d lift them off the road to the safety of a ditch or field, but I haven’t seen any in two years or more. I wonder does that have any relationship to the growing crow population?
Carl says
I saw a few bats a couple of weeks ago. That was the first time I had seen any for years. They used to be a regular sight in the twilight sky in our part of north London 20 years ago.
Was hopeful that I’d see them again, but they haven’t reappeared.
Foxes are regular visitors at both the front and back of the house. Bastards keep crapping on the premises.
Diddley Farquar says
We see deer, birds of prey, foxes etc round our house. We live by the river so there’s great crested grebes, geese, ducks. More exotic fare can be found at our stuga (cottage/cabin) in the forest. We’ve seen a wolverine, we know there are boar from the dug up earth and roots but not seen one, saw a capercaillie and ptarmigan before. Also several kinds of woodpecker, flycatchers, hawks, woodcock, grass snakes, there are adders but I’ve only seen a dead one. We see moose occasionally. Once there was a bear that ran across the road in front of us. A rare sight. Owls have I seen, some pretty big ones. That’s all I can think of now.
Moose the Mooche says
It’s 35 years since Wild Wild Life came out. Thirty five bloody years. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I still think of it as *the new Talking Heads single”…
dai says
And 50 years since the masterpiece that is Wings Wildlife came out.
Edgar Davids says
And just a year before that Cat Stevens pointed out ooh baby, baby it’s a wild world.
Amazing to think that baby would now be 51!
Rigid Digit says
and still It’s hard to get by just upon a smile
Moose the Mooche says
Terrible, really – it’s a sin, in fact.
Gatz says
I’m firmly in the suburbs here, so it’s the occasional fox, or rabbits on a local path known as The Bunny Walks (though not nearly as many as there used to be – maybe something to do with the foxes). Birdlife is more diverse, and I have recently seen buzzards ere for the first time. I know that they are far more widespread than they used to be but I had never seen them in mid Essex, until a week or two ago there were 5 soaring over some fields about 20 minutes walk from home.
From my wfh desk I look out onto trees, so I see the usual tits, sparrows, finches and so on, plus the occasional jay. I have a special fondness for pied wagtails. When I worked in a shopping centre near the town centre I would often see a pair in the loading bay behind the shop. I didn’t go as far as giving them names, but I certainly thought of them as ‘my’ wagtails. The one day I saw about a dozen wagtails and realised that I hadn’t been watching one pair at all, but a random couple at a time from a colony.
I haven’t seen bats here for a while. They used to swoop around the stairwells to the flats where I live because insects were attracted by the lights. Then a few years ago we had the lights replaced by motion detecting, energy saving bulbs and the bats relocated along with the insects.
Pajp says
There is a red squirrel that lives in our garden and I see it from the window in front of my work desk bounding up and down one of our trees. It often has what looks like dried grass in its mouth, so I guess that it is lining its dray in anticipation of the coming winter.
fentonsteve says
Out front is the corner of a park with a big old Oak tree. Of an evening Muntjac deer come out from the woods behind the hospital, cross the park and eat the fallen acorns.
We have Squirrels, Jay, Woodpecker (steady on, Moosey), a Red Kite, and Starlings galore. Geese and the odd Heron on the pond at the far end of the road.
A Robin has settled in our back garden over the last week or so. It looks very pretty bobbing around, until I went out to the garage earlier today. It had shat all over the door handle.
Moose the Mooche says
You have that bloke from Repair Shop in your garden?
Interesting.
PS. I can’t stick cider….
Billybob Dylan says
We have a park about a quarter of a mile down the road that is now the home to a family of coyotes. They’ve already attacked ducks, geese and swans in the pond, as well as a couple of dogs who were let off their leads. Now there’s signs all over the park warning dog owners.
Reports of a roadrunner in the park are unfounded.
dai says
Earlier this year, here in Ottawa a number of dogs were found dead after previously been reported missing. It was believed that humans were performing these horrendous acts, but later a coyote (or two) was found to be responsible. I saw one last year while out running, may have been my fastest kilometre of the year …
Mike_H says
Plenty of Urban Foxes around here. See them scurrying across the roads at night. There are lots of bins to scavenge in. Saw (and managed to photograph) one on the green space between the blocks of flats. He was being teased by a magpie, who was probably after the same bit of food thrown down from one of the flats above mine. There’s an overgrown disused railway line close by so that’s home to the fox, I imagine.
Lots of magpies and pigeons about and a pair of carrion crows. A jay was sighted a month or so back.
There’s an electricity substation in a little fibreglass hut just opposite my kitchen window. It has a flat roof that rain collects on, so birds like to bathe there. Used to see a lot of starlings before but not this year it seems.
The robin that nested in the shrubbery in front of the flats last year hasn’t been sighted this year. There is a black-and-white cat that prowls around from time to time.
Gulls make fairly regular visits and scatter stuff from the two binstores behind the substation all over the grass. We’d probably see more small birds if the management company weren’t getting the shrubbery trimmed up so often by the grounds maintenance contractors.
Squirrels (grey) are out foraging, lately.
Beezer says
Red Kites. Several pairs hover over our part of town regularly. We’re not rural but there is lots of green around and about. Even so, I’d have thought all the small mammals they eat would have long since taken the hint and packed the chattels into a red spotted hanky and left by now.
And buzzards. One summer evening we were driving home through a local housing estate and rounded a corner to see this absolutely gargantuan bird of prey ripping apart a squirrel roadkill in the middle of the residential road. It disappeared up and away instantly at our approach. Mrs Beezer and I had a good 30 seconds open mouthed in the middle of the road. I recently saw a pair, at some distance, circling over the Thames at Cliveden House last weekend. Magnificent.
Mike_H says
Red Kites are scavengers, mostly. They will take small live creatures and sometimes small birds if they manage to catch them unawares, but they usually go for the same sort of diet as crows and ravens.
thecheshirecat says
I got hit over the head by a bat last week as I was cycling to squash. I would have thought its spatial awareness would have stopped it flying into me.
Black Celebration says
I believe they haven’t got the greatest eyesight in the world, according to simile fans worldwide.
Podicle says
How’s the wildlife around here? Well, seeing as ‘here’ is a secluded little valley in the foothills of a South East Queensland rainforest, and that we are currently experiencing the mild seasonal fluctuation that others know as ‘Spring’, the wildlife is going pretty bloody well.
A few snapshots from the last week.
The lovely King Parrots are back from wherever they go in winter, bullying me as I recline in a hammock chair on the veranda until I relent and give up some sunflower seeds. They always send in a stooge first to ask the hard questions, and once the grub has been produced, suddenly there are six or seven. They are polite, but insistent. If I appear to be holding out, one will perch on my book or iPad and lean in expectantly. They are so beautiful that it’s hard to turn them down.
The Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos have also been busy lately, filling the valley with their strange, unearthly cries and loping across the valley with their slow rhythmic flap, like gentle dragons.
A few nights ago, one of the resident large carpet pythons was splayed out on the veranda, pretending that I couldn’t see it as I stir-fried dinner a couple of feet away. I maintained the pretence and continued to cook. At this time of year, a drive up the road during the night reveals numerous snakes basking in the warmth of the bitumen: Pythons, Green Tree Snakes, Whip Snakes, and by the carcass on the side of the road, the odd Red Bellied Black Snake (looks like it sounds).
Speaking of driving, any excursion up our winding, narrow street at dusk or dawn has to be navigated at low speed due to the masses of Pademelons that dart out of the undergrowth in a real-life game of Frogger. These small wallabies look like escapees from a Disney musical, all doe eyed and cute, with little joeys peeking out from pouches. I only have to mow my yard couple of times a year thanks to these scamps. Up the other end of the street, where it opens up a bit, there is a new family of Pretty-Faced Wallabies, looking for all the world like they are going to break into song whenever I cycle past.
We had a bit of rain the last few days, so the past couple of nights the lovely rainforest creek that runs in front of the house was full with the sound of frogs chatting each other up. A quick walk up the creek reveals an impossible variety of amphibians in various shades of green and brown with big red eyes, including some that are barely bigger than a fly.
As I type this and gaze over said creek I see a large goanna stride purposefully up the creek bank and then begin its ascent up a large gum tree, probably to pilfer the eggs of the magpie that’s dive-bombing it. A kookaburra has just swept down and plucked something large and wriggling from my lawn and a couple of scrub turkeys are chasing each other back and forth.
So yes, Mother Nature is odds-on favourite vs mankind in this neck of the woods.
Black Celebration says
“resident large carpet pythons” – now that’s a troubling group of words.
Podicle says
They are big, slow and dopey. The default snake of our area.
thecheshirecat says
Loved that evocative description. It took me back to my first experience of Australia, way back in the 80s. It was Melbourne, so it was crimson rosellas and bell birds, but I remember the pademelons and cassowaries when I got up to QLD. God, I miss it, though the wonder of Australian wildlife did wake me up to what we have in our own country.
Edgar Davids says
Sounds like an incredible place Podicle
Harry Tufnell says
Have visited Australia a few times on guided birdwatching trips, your post just makes me want to be back again! Hopefully a trip to the very north of Queensland is on the cards when all the coughing and dying business is over.
thecheshirecat says
I have had the great fortune to have lived for the last 21 years on a country estate, with a range of habitats. No coast or moorland, but water, woodland, gardens, grazed fields and crumbling farm buildings that welcome nests. It’s been fascinating to see how species rise and fall in strength. One year, jays were in abundance, often it is jackdaws. Working shifts brings me into contact with the nocturnal world and my usual mode of transport is a pushbike, so I get close. I’ve never seen an owl here, but they certainly make their presence audible. Few things lift my day like a badger crossing my silent path on my way home from the last train. Sadly, culling was carried out in this area recently, but I do wonder if there is a connection that this spring I saw hares here for the first time. Maybe the removal of one species made space for another of comparable size. And all the while, the buzzards survey the scene from way on high. Their call must strike terror into the heart of their prey, but it has a minimal beauty for me, that accompanies all my time outside. Very often, I will follow one just ahead of me as I cycle up the avenue of trees to the normal world outside. Unperturbed by each other, I get close enough to see the majesty of their size and beauty of their feathers.
I’ll stop there, but you can imagine there is more.
Beezer says
There are a few magpies close by us. At least one pair sees our front and back garden as their worm patch.
Sometimes I’ll watch them for a while, with my coffee in hand stood at one of the windows. Quite often recently one of them will stop what they’re doing and stare back at me with a lengthy and unblinking disdain.
‘Yes? Shouldn’t you be logged on upstairs by now?’
Jaygee says
When my uncle (a genuinely remarkable man and brilliant boatbuilder) of whom I was inordinately fond died about 18 months ago, he left me and my sister about six acres of the small Irish riverfront farm where he, my dad and their brother and two sisters grew up.
In addition to the dilapidated cottage where he spent all bar the last nine months of his 95-year life, it includes and a beautiful copse and stretch of riverfront. While I would never sell the place which is only “worth” (note inverted commas) about E50K as it can’t be developed, the rest of my family has pretty much disowned me. I suspect this is because they would sell the place in a minute if given the chance. Drunk on the euphoria that comes from being able to relive happy childhood memories of being able wander far and wild with Jimmy’s dogs with my own pooch, I couldn’t give a fuck.
Jimmy being Jimmy, he was more intent on building boats than fixing up his home. As a result, the cottage is well and truly fucked (“don’t even think about it” said the surveyor I got in to advise about how I might salvage the place.) . As Mary lives in the UK, my wife and I have taken it upon ourselves to do all we can to revitalize the property’s smallish front and back gardens by clearing the areas of nettles, etc. Our ultimate aim is to fill the garden with bee- and bird-attracting wildflowers. As the rest of the land is a haven for wildlife, we’re just going to let nature take its course and rewild it.
In the few months we’ve been trying to tidy the gardens, I’ve been blessed to see dozens of different birds and insects, plus a mink and a couple of badgers (there are several sets in the little copse area).
As last week was atypically dry here, I was down pretty much every day. On one lovely sunny afternnon, I was almost moved to tears when I saw a fox trot casually from out of the treeline, stroll insouciantly across the newly cut meadow, lie down and stretch out in the sun as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Edgar Davids says
Sounds beautiful Jaygee. Lovely to watch it change over the seasons
Vulpes Vulpes says
Wonderful!
Moose the Mooche says
A reminder that everybody (else) on the Afterword lives in places where DI Barnaby is liable to show up. I live somewhere where McNulty and Bunk are liable to show up.
Jaygee says
I thought the mean streets of ‘Ull were patrolled by DS Aector McAvoy, Moose
Moose the Mooche says
He seems to spend most of his time poking around rural East Yorkshire, before getting into yet another fight which leaves him almost dead but which he somehow survives. I’m starting to think those stories are made up.
Sitheref2409 says
A ton of different birds – swifts, galahs and others.
Wallabies and Rock Kangaroos about, oooh, 35 yards from us.
Snakes. Lots of snakes.
Spiders. Yeah, the spiders.
Ants. Lotsandlotsandlots.
Moose the Mooche says
Rock Kangaroos? With tour jackets and mullets? Terrifying…
Junior Wells says
Mynahs local and the hated Indian mynah- actually both hated. Doves seagulls ravens ( Aussie crows) wattle birds, finches and recently a flock of as the name suggests, very colourful rainbow lorikeets.
Possums – ring tail and brush tail.
Heaps of spiders, harmless around here.
mikethep says
Noisy Miners have seen off all the small birds in our garden, and they often have a go at the lorikeets too. A good early warning system for cats though. Also butcher birds, magpies and the hated bush turkeys. Fig birds occasionally show up when the mulberry is fruiting.
Possums drop out of the gum trees onto our tin roof with a crash that would wake the dead.
We occasionally find redbacks under the garden furniture. Lots of other spiders but nothing alarming, although sharing the bathroom with a huntsman is unsettling.
Blue tongue lizards and unidentifiable skinks. Cockroaches in the compost bins. That’s about it.
Moose the Mooche says
I used to live in Mansfield and the Miners Welfare Clubs were pretty noisy, especially if there were a problem wit bingo.
dkhbrit says
I love this time of year, just as much as Spring. Everything in transition. We’re seeing fewer and fewer birds but once we get the feeders out our resident winter population will be back visiting us. Saw a male pheasant yesterday. Interestingly the first we’ve seen in these parts. There were females about earlier in the year. We see surprisingly little of anything else but there is evidence of rodents or other small mammals around the place.
Mike_H says
Out of my kitchen window I saw a large bird of prey in flight about an hour ago. Chasing a pigeon in a very determined fashion. Silhouetted against a pale grey sky and I didn’t have my spex on, so I couldn’t make out any colours.
Forked tail, very possibly a Red Kite. Unusual to see one of those here in the semi-urban outskirts of Watford. If that’s what it was. They have been reintroduced in The Chilterns.
I remember when I lived in West Wales (1972-’84) there were several pairs of Red Kites about on Tregaron Marsh but none to speak of in the rest of the UK. There was also a single pair of Black Kites there but they did not prosper, unfortunately.
Black Celebration says
Here in NZ there are certain areas where we just can’t compete with our friends over the water in Australia. One of them is scary wildlife. You’d struggle to find a snake of any description over here but in Aussie there’s a casual reference above to carpet pythons. They may be dopey and slow but they’re still Great Big Snakes.
I have seen the odd weta indoors but that’s really, really rare – and they’re completely harmless.
You don’t see stag beetles here, which is good a reason as any to leave England. I had a fight with one in 1978 while I was alone in the house. I was watching Saturday evening TV one summer evening and became aware of a rustling at the bottom of the curtains. A moth perhaps? So I investigate and a big stag beetle lunges at me and gets in my longish hair. After stoically* brushing it aside, I can’t see where it’s gone – only find it on the back of my neck, aggressively buzzing like one of those discs you get in cafes when you’re order is ready. Just when it thought it was gone, it reappeared somewhere in the environs of the back of my head. I had to use a broom handle I’m afraid to end its life but even that wasn’t as easy as it sounds.
*by which I mean squealing like a toddler.
thecheshirecat says
But one of the things that struck me about New Zealand wildlife was how comfortable it was around humans. Now, clearly that didn’t end well for some species, but it is utterly endearing. I recall a weka being such a permanent feature of the scene on the Queen Charlotte Track that it made the Lonely Planet guide. On another occasion in Paparoa, this tomtit bounced right up to my boot to give me an inspection. I looked down at the thing, as it eyed me quizzically, thinking ‘Listen mate, if I was stood next to a creature that was something like 9000 times my body mass and 100 times taller, I would not be pulling at its boot laces; I would be making myself scarce.’
aging hippy says
Aren’t there still orcs in NZ?
Black Celebration says
Orcas yes.
Harry Tufnell says
Here in rural north Norfolk we’re a bit spoilt, I’ve seen nearly 90 different species of bird in, over or from my garden since we’ve been here including some quite rare ones like Ring Ouzel, Woodcock and Great Egret. We have bats, hares and muntjac deers frequently and over the past couple of months the lawns have been strewn with hedgehog shit. Unfortunately we also have moles, lots and lots of moles…
Freddy Steady says
Ever seen or heard a Bittern Harry/Neil?
I’d love to do both.
thecheshirecat says
I have. Not as close to hand as I would like, so I will have to return. Strumpshaw Fen just east of Norwich. Lovely spot.
Harry Tufnell says
I’ve seen them at several sites on the coast, at Titchwell, Holme NOA and at Cley. They aren’t common but with patience and a bit of luck you can get them. They’ve recently become established inland at my old haunt of Old Moor RSPB reserve just outside Barnsley.
Arthur Cowslip says
It must be an age thing, but as I relax into my middle ages I love a bit of local wildlife. Birdsong really cheers me up. Doesn’t even need to be anything fancy: blackbirds, crows and woodpigeons suit me fine. I love hearing and seeing them all. Magpies as well.
A good day is when I see a heron, a deer or a fox.
And we also get bats out our back garden. Although not so many this year for some reason?
I love most of all the birds of prey, although I’m hopeless at telling the difference between them. A few weeks ago I was absolutely transfixed by one brazen chap soaring close to my head in a thick wood, which is unusual as usually they are usually out and about in open areas. I’ve been reliably informed it must have been a sparrow-hawk, as they are most likely to divebomb through trees (and are built for it apparently)!
The other bird I don’t see/hear often but always cheers me up is a woodpecker.
fentonsteve says
Many a Saturday morning kids’ football match has been enhanced by “Is that a Hawk or a Kite?” amongst the parent spectators.
Usually followed by “Oh, did we miss a goal? Well done/bad luck”