My Garden and Other Animals. Mike Dilger
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souls, I was quick to suggest that any time either needed a watery fix, they both had carte blanche to hop over the fence whenever they felt like it!
Lorraine also hilariously accused us of attempting to steal her garden birds with our now extensive offerings in the form of a stand-up bird table, a sunflower hearts feeder, a Niger feeder and a fat-ball dispenser. It was probably true that in the space of barely a week, and given the superior feed on offer in our garden, many of the birds had already swapped their notoriously fickle allegiances and were now choosing to spend most of their time emptying our feeders rather than theirs.
But joking aside, with our feeders in the centre, Andy and Lorraine’s to the left and a small feeding station in Dennis and Marjory’s garden immediately to our right, the local resident birds must surely have been some of the best fed in the southwest. Also, in the space of just a couple of weeks since we had moved in, it was not only astonishing how quickly the birds had found the food, but noticeable that we had already recorded a wider range of species at our feeders here than in the previous 10 years at our old garden flat in Bristol. Interestingly, the sheer quantity of birds was also much higher; it was not uncommon for us to peer out of the kitchen window to observe not only that every single perch was taken on all the feeders, but that queuing systems had often formed on the nearby bushes as well. The garden was quite literally alive with birds! This rich variety and abundance instantly brought two thoughts to my mind: firstly, what fun it would be compiling a garden bird list; and secondly, that it wouldn’t be too long before this huge concentration of small birds would register on a sparrowhawk’s radar!
With Christina away visiting friends overnight, I dragged myself out of bed the following morning for a spot of garden birdwatching, only momentarily undeterred by the miserable weather. One of the slight peculiarities, and immense irritations, of the house meant that there were comparatively few good vantage points from which to actually properly enjoy the garden, a fact we would rectify when we had sufficient cash to build the much-planned rear extension. In the meantime, the current best seat, or stand, in the house was from the landing window, halfway up the stairs.
Looking down, fully expecting a tit and finch-fest, I was aghast to see not a single bird on any of the feeders due to the dominating presence of a whole bunch of greedy grey squirrels. Four of these invaders could be counted, dotted across the garden and monopolising each feeder whilst the birds looked on helplessly from the nearby bushes, too intimidated to compete.
The grey squirrel is an animal that as a naturalist fills me with a whole range of mixed emotions. Brought over from the eastern side of North America and deliberately introduced on some twenty occasions between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their rapid spread throughout England and Wales has proved the stuff of ecological nightmares. Now numbering as many as 2.5 million, this adaptable and hardy animal has become so widespread in our parks, gardens and woodlands that it is now quite probably the most commonly seen mammal in Britain, and as such is accepted by many as a wholly natural part of our wildlife.
To the neutral, the greys have obvious charm and appeal, and it has to be stated that they didn’t actually ask to be brought over to the UK and then become so vilified just for making an unqualified success of their new home. Unfortunately, the cold fact of the matter is that they have undoubtedly had a major impact on our native flora and fauna, which are poorly adapted to withstand their presence. Most well known is the contribution of the grey squirrel to the catastrophic decline of our native red squirrel, so much so that the red squirrel now only flourishes either in large parts of Scotland where the greys are still mostly absent, in a few grey-squirrel-free offshore islands or in large conifer belts ill-suited to the Yankee invader. Perhaps less understood by the public, though, are both the immense damage that grey squirrels cause to trees and the serious impact on many of our native, breeding woodland birds. Though many have called for their total extermination, this is totally impracticable, and, I’m afraid, irrespective of how we feel about the animal, they are definitely here to stay.
While a small part of me admired their brazen attitude as they reached across from the pergola, like supple athletes, to empty my feeders in double-quick time, the larger part of me was so indignant that I instinctively ran downstairs to shoo them out of the garden, momentarily forgetting I was in little more than my underpants. On seeing my naked flesh and hearing my accompanying ‘get out of it!’ they hurriedly spun round on their heels and triple-jumped their way back into the woodland at the bottom of the garden, disappearing in a matter of seconds.
I knew that with such a major food source on offer they would be back as soon as the coast was clear. So for the next hour I played a cat-and-mouse game with them, as I watched them quietly creep back into the garden and onto the feeders only for me to rush out and scare them off again (having got dressed in the meantime – of course!). After a while they either got the message that they were not welcome or had had their fill anyway, but no one was more aware than I was that this was little more than tokenism, and that I would ultimately have to adopt some serious anti-squirrel technologies if I didn’t want to spend the equivalent of the Greek national debt on bird food. So the ‘tree rats’ should enjoy the free handouts while they still could! With the squirrels at least temporarily pushed back, this at last gave me my first opportunity to watch the feeders being used by the animals they were designed for.
As the birds slowly returned, I delighted in the most wonderful hour watching blue tits, great tits, robins, chaffinches and greenfinches pile in despite the still awful weather. It’s been well known for at least a couple of decades that living with pets can lower blood pressure, lessen anxiety and boost our immunity, but because I can’t commit to owning a pet, due to the fact that I’m often away filming, I have to say that watching garden birds comes a very close second. It’s hard to explain the level of happiness I gain from watching the birds go about their daily business, but for someone who often spends his life dashing around at 70mph, it was important to take some time out on the hard shoulder every now and again.
I don’t claim to have been the only person to have uncovered this elixir of life, as the RSPB recently revealed the astonishing statistic that as many as 40 per cent of British households will feed their garden birds at some point during the year – more evidence of the power of wildlife as one of the best natural anti-depressants on the market.
The rain eventually receded and Christina returned, so we began to make preparations to launch ourselves into the garden for the afternoon’s activity: Operation Fence Dismantle. Earlier in the week I had sneakily taken a peek into next door’s garage, while they were putting out their recycling, and had noted a far more impressive collection of gardening tools and implements than we had yet been able to muster. Having made a mental note that some of these might come in handy at some point, barely a few days later I was now hoping they could be persuaded to lend us one of their crowbars. Knocking on the door, I fully expected it to be answered by Marjory and so was surprised to meet the tall, gaunt figure of Dennis, the Great Gatsby of our street, and the last of our immediate neighbours I had not yet met.
Though undeniably unwell, in addition to being both an ex-policeman and an utterly charming chap, Dennis also confirmed that he would be more than happy to lend us any of the tools we might need. Because his illness seriously affected his ability to undertake anything but the lightest of duties, he explained that he wasn’t in any position to wield tools, and so would be pleased to see them put to good use.
Since Dennis had lived in the house for the best part of 20 years, I was also to discover that he was the most enormous fountain of knowledge about both his and our garden and the adjacent brook. Both keen gardeners themselves, Dennis and Marjory regularly saw kingfishers whizzing up and down the brook, and in addition to seeing pheasants in the garden had even recorded roe deer on a couple of occasions too! He also tantalisingly revealed that whilst brown trout used to be commonplace in the brook, he hadn’t seen them for several years, possibly due to a combination of a couple of unfortunate pollution incidents upstream and a silting up of the stream bed. Trying, in part, to rectify the silt issue, he had even put a few heavy blocks