Many, Many Tits

Stop right there and discontinue reading if your mind is in the gutter and thinking - WOW - she's going to write about female anatomy 'cuz it ain't gonna happen!  I'm talking about the lovely little English birds - tits - Greater Tits, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Lesser Tits (not sure they have these but there must be lesser if there are greater) and Crested Tits.    So there.


They are delightful little birds and quite colorful mostly, except for the Coal Tits which are pretty much black and white but still delightful.  We have many in our garden and they come to the bird feeders frequently.  We have them all except the Crested Tits and I haven't even seen one of those but did see in a book that they exist.  The tits are our most frequent visitors although we have a large contingent of Blue Jays, Woodpeckers, Wood Pigeons, Robins, Starlings, some Wrens,and Magpies that show up regularly and maybe a few others that are not quite so frequent.  But I think I like the tits the best.  


I have to admit that both my husband and I dissolve into laughter any time either of us go "Hey, there's a couple of TITS in the garden!"  We go all Bevis and Butthead at that saying and then we look to see what kind they are and enjoy the heck out of watching them.  Everybody can enjoy a little sophomoric and idiotic fun.


  Think I read somewhere that the English Starling and even the Wood Pigeon might be in danger but I think if that's the case, the bird society could come to our garden and I'd happily let them have a bunch of mine to take elsewhere and repopulate.


Last year, my gardener told me I shouldn't feed the birds so much when there were babies in nests as they needed to learn to hunt and catch the bugs and worms and slugs and such.  Good advice and it makes sense but my Tits and other small birds just went elsewhere and I didn't have a whole lot of birds around or any birdsong during that period when I wasn't feeding them so this year I expect I'll just keep feeding them except on the days when my gardener comes.  Is that bad?  probably.  Because who knows if the next person to rent/own this house will be as happy taking care of the wild and feral creatures that meander through here.


Last year I put out a bunch of houses in the hopes that I'd get something to nest in them.  Didn't happen but the houses are still out there and maybe some little new mom and dad bird will need a new house and find one.  Also put out a bunch of hangers that have wool and stuff in them that supposedly the birds will take to make their nests.  Can't do much else unless I go build the nest for them and stuff them inside. 


As I've stated before, the birdsong starts around 6 and is quite lovely.  Don't know who sings what as usually I can't see which bird has its mouth open when I can hear songs.  It won't be quite so lovely come June when the birds start singing around 4:30 but right now I enjoy it.  Anyway, having Tits in the garden is great (Ha ha, ha ha) Love it  and those cute little birds. 

Death and Destruction in the Garden

Death and Destruction in the Garden

            I love my English Garden.  It has numerous plants in it I haven’t even identified yet and they delight me when they suddenly bloom at odd times during the year.  Also, I have spent a good deal of time in the garden putting in new plants and working on the old ones and doing general gardening type things, EXCEPT the weed pulling and cutting grass and raking leaves which I hate and for which we have a gardener.  Love my gardener too as he lets me know which plants are weeds and should be removed or when to put in bulbs of one kind or another.  That said, be advised that I have a very dark brown thumb, almost black, in that in other locations we have lived, my garden has never prospered or done well and I am very good at killing things, like the very plants that are now blooming voraciously.  Now that this dark secret about me is out in the open, my English garden seems to forgive my dark brown thumb and things grow in spite of it so another reason to love it.

            Last week I found some dahlias on sale at the local nursery and couldn’t resist getting a 6 pack and sticking them wherever I could find an empty spot.  They were doing quite well last week in their new homes.  However, this week, it looks as if war has been declared on them.  Every blossom was gone and every leaf eaten clean away.  I have a green stick with smaller green sticks sprouting out of in in each place where previously there was a nice dahlia blossom.  And the destruction did not appear to be limited to the one species.  Some of my lilies looked to have some munch marks on them and the potato vine.  As I walker further around my house, I could see the hop plant had a few signs of destruction too.  Some killers stalk my garden.

            I have the means and technology and money to spring for the best to get rid of   these monsters of death.  Normally, I like to live and let live but when it comes to my garden, I am going to blast away the slugs and snails that come to feast on my hard work.  It’s not easy keeping things alive with a dark brown thumb and I don’t need the help to kill something.  I’m sure that the slugs and snails have a purpose but I haven’t figured out what it is yet.  So out comes the slug killer and I sprinkled it around my plants yesterday while evilly thinking of death to the guerrillas.

            YUCK.  I am the dispenser of death to these slugs but I don’t want to see it.  I am faint of heart when it comes to the actual visual effect.  I want to kill in the darkness and have them tidily slither away to die in a dark corner and fertilize my garden.  So I was less than delighted when I came home from dropping my husband off at work and found two huge banana slugs (not sure what they are called here but they are big and evil looking and nasty looking and BIG and slimy and nasty) that had crawled out of the garden and onto the brick wall, probably hoping to evade death and destruction by escaping the pellets of poison.  It was too late for them though and they were busy releasing their slime on my brick wall as they crawled to their death.  It is their death curse to release as much slime as possible.  Ugh.  Several of their smaller cousins were there too.  Take that to me they seemed to be saying!  Kill us but we will slime to the final end!  I managed to scoop them all onto a paper and stomped them to ensure their immediate death.  I didn’t want them to suffer long agonizing death throes.  I am not a monster after all. 

            The deed is done.  I put out more slug killer in case I missed a spot.  But now my brick wall is slimed and I have no clue how to get it off of the bricks.  The slime seems almost permanently adhered to the bricks and it’s thick and gooey and just all around ugly.  I am not touching it at all.  This is England, after all.  It will rain a lot this week or next and hopefully Mother Nature will forgive me for slaying some of her noxious creatures and clean my brick wall for me.

            The war continues I know.  Some will escape and come back for the next round of munching on my precious plants.  The scents must call to them and they probably come marching up from the golf course and the woods to the lure of my plants.  I’ll get them though.  I’ll get them.

Crows hate magpies

Crows REALLY don’t like magpies

           

            Sitting in our conservatory yesterday reading and watching all the activity in our garden.  We have a couple of big crows that come in to eat whatever they like apparently and usually they like whatever the magpies are having.  Although when there is food out for the badgers, the crows go for that.  Yesterday I noticed that as soon as a magpie showed up in the yard, the crows would come from wherever and swoop down on the magpies and chase them away.  The chase would go on from tree top to treetop until we could no longer see them flying.  As soon as a magpie came back, the crows would fly in on attack again, dive-bombing the magpies.  The magpies are well aware of the animosity the crows hold for them and take off when they spot a crow.  Luckily for the magpies, the crows don’t hang out very often or the magpies would have to find another place for freeloading.

            The babies are all big enough to be out and about now.  Last week I saw a Greater Tit mom still feeding her baby.  This week the baby had flown to the suet feeder and was helping himself.  The mom flew to the feeder too (could have been the dad).  They were on opposite sides of the feeder and the bigger bird (which is not bigger by much but has the adult plumage) hopped around until it could reach the smaller bird and then pecked its foot until the baby left.  Guess mom wasn’t ready to give up her baby feedings yet or once you start eating on your own, that’s it, you’re out!

            Other babies that are out are the squirrel babies.  Again, not much difference in size now between the babies and the adults.  Yesterday there were 7 squirrels running around the yard after the peanuts.  One squirrel was sitting by the wheelbarrow gnome chomping down on the peanuts when a baby came along timidly.  Baby had good reason to be timid as the bigger and older squirrel immediately chased him away.

            The only parents and babies I have seen cooperating for food have been the two mice.  They will both hop into the wheelbarrow gnome and sit there and eat peanuts together as fast as they can because as soon as a squirrel sees them, ATTACK.  But the mice are quick and agile and when the older squirrel was chasing the younger squirrel away from the peanuts yesterday, the mouse ran out and grabbed some peanuts and was gone before the squirrel knew it.  Gotta be fast to live in my garden!

            There is a black and white cat that has discovered that the garden might be a place for a meal.  So far he hasn’t caught anything except our cat’s eye, who rushes to the door and growls and smacks the door.  Puff is defending the home front.  He usually manages to chase the cat away (although that’s usually at about the same time the cat sees us).  Puff is then so exhausted from his work that he sits and collapses at our feet while we praise him for doing such a good job. 

I love my garden.  I’ve never been a birder but now I get all excited when I see a new bird and try and look up to see what it is.  Some birds don’t come very often.  Today the woodpecker was out there for a while, taking a break from pecking wood it seemed.  It’s always interesting to sit and watch the garden and see the action.

Mean Squirrels

Mean Squirrels

            Everything gets fed in my garden and I mean everything from the squirrels, birds, foxes, deer, crows, cats, dogs, bees, badgers, hedgehogs (hopefully, haven’t seen evidence yet), people, fish, and just about anything else that runs through the garden gets food of some sort.  Sometimes it’s a little tricky spacing out the food bowls and feeders so that unfriendly sorts do not tangle up together.  I think we do a fairly good job of it though and most of the animals are happy and love running around the garden and it’s quite fun to watch them.

            That said, I have some very mean squirrels in the garden.  They are very good at stealing the birdseed and such.  I put out peanuts for them but when the peanuts are gone, they come after the seed and I have had to put out new feeders because they have chewed through all the plastic ones.  They’ll even sit in the bowls and eat the mealworms which did surprise me a bit.  Now they have stooped to a new low in meanness.

            I have gnomes in my garden.  I love my gnomes.  They stand around the fish pond and watch the fish (although the fish are still missing in action, hiding in the muck) and watch the lily pads grow and basically are not bothering anyone.  Four of my gnomes were solar light gnomes.  They have been in the garden for a long time and finally we are getting enough light, some days, for them to glow at night. 

            The squirrels though!  Mean critters.  If I have not gotten out there in the morning with a fresh batch of peanuts, they are going over and kicking the gnomes into the pond!  I have had to pull out gnomes from the pond several afternoons.  Once in the pond, the solar gnomes don’t work so very well anymore.  There is a gnome with a wheelbarrow too and he gets peanuts in his wheelbarrow every day.  By the early afternoon, his wheelbarrow is empty.  By the early evening, the squirrels have kicked him over.  I have had to move all of my gnomes away from the pond because they can’t swim.  The wheelbarrow gnome has to fend for himself.  The squirrels are going to have to learn to play nicely with the gnomes or they are going to find less peanuts out there, not more!