Great Spotted Woodpecker - Dendrocopos major
Well it has been a while, and lots has changed since my last post, but I could not pick-up the blogging baton again in earnest without mentioning another visitor to The Farm, a Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major).
The photograph is not great I am afraid, but I think you get the idea! It makes a right din when it arrives, and it was the yakking sound that alerted me to the visit first.
A first for The Farm today was spotting a fox sussing out the land. Looks kinda cute at the moment, but I know I won’t be so impressed when we have chickens!
My neighbour’s chicken run is like a Chicken Fort Knox, with a high and low electric fence running all the way round it. He lost some chickens due to foxes, and now he has a shoot-on-sight policy. (The foxes, not the chickens!!)
I did spot another fox recently in the neighbouring field carrying a dead rabbit off, so if we could just train them to eat rabbits (wild ones!) we would be laughing.
In my dreams maybe…
The Roe Deer is the next culprit in our Wildlife Strikes Back series. Apparently the Buck’s (Males) are rutting and a response to this period is to rub their antlers (which can also be itchy) on trees or shrubs etc. This rubbing action strips the bark of young trees, and in our case, one of our Leylandi.
Well we appear to have rather been overrun with Rabbits at the moment! We throw the curtains back in the morning and there they are all are, munching our trees and digging holes in the grass.
Talking to our neighbours there does appear to be more than usual this year, just our luck. There are not many options for protecting yourself against these fluffy bunny pests. The favoured option by the land owners around here seems to be to shoot them!
The first of ‘The Wildlife Strikes Back’ is the Leaf Beetle Chrysomelidae! They are actually very pretty to look at, ranging from black to petrol in colour. However, the damage they cause is far from pretty. They have some what mullered the Prunus’ (Ornamental Cherries).
