Tag Archives: Animals

Our noisy new neighbours

Posted on by Richard
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I have said before how much we enjoy the wildlife around us here. We are literally surrounded by birds and beasts of all variety and we love it.

However, there are some new creatures in the neighbourhood who are causing a bit of a stir….two owls.

At first we thought there was just one, but last night we saw both of them together. They fly around the square of our hamlet hopping from the telegraph pole to the fence-post to the roof and back again.

We viewed them with a certain fascination and wonder at first. How lucky we are to have such beautiful birds living so close. But it seems the new neighbours are getting quite settled and are claiming the territory as their own….much to the annoyance of Charlie and Lola (our cats)!

The owls are now taking to sitting on their loft perch and screeching at the top of their voices at the cats below. And the poor kitties, being such soft creatures, are scared out of their wits and come running inside!

Here’s a video of one of the hoodlums. Its a little shaky as I didn’t have time to grab the tripod.

Anyone know what kind of owl it is? And how to persuade it to make friends with Charlie and Lola? :)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju_a4nboYjw

A cry in the dark…by what?

Posted on by Richard
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Okay folks, I’m looking for some help again here. This creature has been entertaining us at night for a while so I thought I’d capture it’s call and see if any of my faithful readers can help me again with identifying it.  You were all so great with the frogs & nightingales, I’m sure someone can tell me what this thing is :)

Your guesses in the comments would be great. Thanks!

Name that sound

Posted on by Richard
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I am constantly amazed by all the wildlife around us here. The other night I walked down to the lake at the end of our lane to try to capture some of the sounds this wildlife makes.

Anyone out there care to try to identify the various sounds (other than my feet crunching in the gravel obviously!), as I’m a total duffer when it comes to animals. Your David Attenborough-esque comments would be much appreciated!

Surrounded by wildlife

Posted on by Richard
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I don’t think we’ve ever noticed so much wildlife around us than we have since we moved here. Every day we seem to come into contact with some new creature that we have previously not met.

First there was the owl who used to fly over the car as we drove Rosie in to College first thing in a morning. Sadly Mr Owl came a bit too close to the car one morning and nearly joined me in the front seat. Having clattered into the windscreen at great speed he promptly disappeared never to be seen again – very sad :(

Then there was the hare – I have never seen one before, but we had rabbits back in the UK and I imagined they were of a similar shape and size. Well, I was sooo wrong. One evening I was nipping out to the wood shed for some logs, when I spotted him. There he was behind the christmas tree in our garden (yes, we have a christmas tree, only because it’s too big for us to dig up right now!). I crept round the corner but he spotted me and – zoom – off he shot down the side of the house. He was HUGE! Our little bunny was nothing like that. The size of a small dog, he bounded off like greased lightening.
After grabbing an arm-full of logs i left the wood shed only to be charged almost to the ground by my mate Linford Christie the hare!
Anyway, we have since come up against mice, rats (1-0 to humans on that score), butterflies, bats, sheep, horses, pigeons (dead), frogs, bees, ants, dogs, cats (come back little grey cat, i want to adopt you!), centipedes, lizards and almost-transparent spiders with very long legs.
We’re not friends with all the animal kingdom, but at least we have met a lot more of it in the last few months and we are all the better for it.

So long, Roland

Posted on by Richard
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At the weekend I became an official inhabitant of the countryside – yes, I killed my first rat.

My opponent, RolandNow it’s not something I feel particularly happy about – I’ve only ever killed animals accidentally before by hitting them in the car, so to deliberately kill something came quite hard to me.

However, our friend Roland was sitting under the washing line and we needed to bring the washing in, so it was time for me to step up to the plate and show the rodent world that I meant business. After all, we have been kept awake far too many nights by various unidentified rodents dancing a merry jig in the roof over our bed – I figured it was payback time.

Of course, had I been a real country fellow I would have just clubbed or skewered it with a spade and been done with it. But somehow I couldn;t bring myself to do that, so I took to throwing large rocks at it. Less messy I thought. This was true, but also less accurate….

After several failed attempts to deal the killing blow I finally managed to hit the  furry fella square in the head, which seemed to do the job. Several large rocks later and I was sure of my victory. All hail the conquering hero! See how brave he is taking on a creature 1/20th his size! See the adoring family welcoming back the brave warrior, safe in the knowledge that the vicious monster is no more…..

I’m sure this was the first of many such encounters to come – here’s hoping they don’t all play on my concience like this one.