Author Archives: jamesnatureblog

This year when I had no nesting birds or beech martens the clear highlight of my nature watching were the fox visits to the garden. This has been a first for me, I’d never previously seen or recorded a fox in the garden although we live in the type of suburban environment in which theyContinue reading “My Highlight from 2022”

My main hesitation before installation the pond was that I would just be creating a perfect habitat for mosquitoes, of which we already had plenty. We’re right now at peak ‘mozzie’ in the garden I can say that although there are still plenty, I’m not sure that there are more and the benefits of theContinue reading “Summer for the Pond”

This year I didn’t see any family groups visiting the garden during the late spring or early summer and I guess it’s now largely past this point. What I did see over the last week though was a noticeably smaller hedgehog, I guess it must be a young, newly independent individual on some of it’sContinue reading “Juvenile Hedgehog”

I found a pretty well formed egg on the ground, so of course the question is ‘name that egg’. It’s largely white and shiny, for scale I included the obligatory 1Euro coin in the photo, but the egg measures about 40mm in ‘height’. Very interestingly it is splashed with yellow. But a give away isContinue reading “Name that Egg”

As a postscript to the fox fight, yesterday morning I found this in the middle of my lawn. It’s quite a chunk from the tip of a fox tail. Really unfortunately, but I’m afraid rather typically, I didn’t have any trail cameras out on the night in question, so no images. It may have comeContinue reading “Fox Fight – Postscript”

A second fox, yes a second fox, this week came into the garden for a brief visit and it resulted in a rather dramatic fight between the two. Firstly my ‘regular’ fox arrived. I’m still struggling with a reliable means of identification but it does seem to be the same individual, and it continues toContinue reading “Fighting Foxes”

Fox highlight of the week was the night it made a rather concerted effort to get the food inside the hedgehog feed station. It could obviously smell the cat biscuits inside and was hungry enough to try very hard to get at them. There’s no real way that it could dig in, although it hadContinue reading “Fox & The Feed Station”

The fox, and I’m still working on the assumption that it’s always the same fox, has become a regular visitor to the garden. It’s now appearing nearly every night, with or without the enticement of food. It always enters the garden via the hole in the fence created for the hedgehogs and I have beenContinue reading “Fox Update”

It’s taken a long time but I’ve finally, today, recorded my 30th different bird species in the garden. The lucky bird number 30 was a Redstart and I was also very fortunate to record it drinking from the water dish. I didn’t actually see the bird live, so I’ve only got the video as proof,Continue reading “Bird Number 30 – Redstart”