I had a wildlife disappointment this week. After spending a large chunk of Saturday night happily dreaming I was watching three pine martins playing in a clearing I woke to remember that I've never seen one pine martin, let alone three playing together. Who knows what brought on this pine martin moment but I was very disappointed when I woke up.
While these lovely creatures are now missing from England and Wales there are still places they can be seen in Scotland and mainland Europe and hopefully, with a conservation status of "Least Concern", there's a good chance I'll be able to see them in the future, not just in my dreams.
After three weeks of having my bird feeder up on the window no-one's seen any birds showing any interest. So another wildlife disappointment, or so I thought until this morning. The feeder's still got lots of seed on it, but there are hardly any dried meal worms left! So, presuming meal worms don't blow out of the feeder faster than seeds, something's got a taste for meat.
There are lots of robins locally which is probably the best guess, but being close to the river means there are pied and grey wagtails around too. As well as other insect eaters like wrens and thrushes which I've seen less of. Unless the mystery is solved soon I may have to invest in a feeder cam!
I've managed to stick to my resolution of one veggie day a week so I'm upping it to two. There are loads of very yummy looking recipes in Hugh F-W's book River Cottage Everyday Veg which will give me some inspiration. And I've harvested my first home grown crop of the year, cress! Not a very demanding plant I know, in fact I ignored it for a few days, it wilted and then revived itself when a little water was added. But while I wait for my iris plants to grow and hopefully the peppers to it keeps me entertained and adds something to egg sandwiches.
I've noted with meal worms soaked in water and placed in low laying vegetation then wrens/dunnocks/robins. In tree branches (spike them on branches) the Goldcrest and Sparrows, on my feeders it's mostly starlings.
ReplyDeleteI've also noticed both on my feeders, what I've read on other blogs and have been told alot of peoples feeders with seeds on are being mostly ignored, I hope the dire summer hasn't effected the seed quality
Thanks for the comment Douglas! That's really interesting. My seeds are definitely being ignored at the moment. But no sign of the mysterious meal worm eater yet. We're on the first floor of our flats so it's hard to tell which species might be visiting. Hopefully I'll spot it soon!
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