Licking the Lid of Life....my esoteric diary

Oh you guys have made me laugh so much this morning :D

Harry is gorgeous Rosie! I too have designs on a pygmy hedgehog ... does he love baths like all those little darlings on YouTube? They really are adorably cute, though ducks are better for eating your slugs Sam (and I REALLY want ducks :D)
 
Molly, ducks maybe but what I really want is an egglu and some chickens. Unfortunately we don't have a big enough garden what with three dogs needing the runabout space.

Cavegirl, I feel you winged pain. I have little bird houses up and bought a stand to hang food from. All I ever got were loads and loads of starlings. Let's face it, that's the bird equivalent to inviting a load of noisy chavs round for a barbecue.
 
Wow lentil thats lovely! We dont have wildies here (badgers around) but id do the cameras and hog houses thing too if we did :)
And I would love a goat! Maybe I should start a letter to Santa like Sam's.....
We are hoping to move to a bigger house with land in the nearish future to set our business up so hopefully then we can have goats :)
Im not convinced Harry would enjoy a bath to be honest! I haven't seen the YouTube clips so ill check them out but after having to bathe Spoon the chick twice daily I vowed to bath animals only out of necessity haha.
I couldn't agree more re the starlings.. They're so noisy! It does take a while for birds to feel comfortable, but I can help if you put the feeders far away from the house?
 
Oh Sam - I've been hankering after an Egglu for months! Like you though, although the garden isn't tiny and I could conceivably fit one in, the dogs are an issue (I have 2 Jack Russells) plus we are right next to a park and get a lot of urban foxes, which often come into the gardens so it's a bit of a non starter.

But .... Ooooh! I so want to have fresh eggies :(
 
Haha....we have a bird house too.......with a camera.
Earlier on in the year, we put it up and as we we're packing to go on holiday we noticed a little bird in and out checking out the joint!
Low and behold, on our return from holidays, we had a resident complete with a very fine nest!! Then the eggs appeared.
It was lovely, every morning before getting out of bed we'd check the status on out TV. Gradually they hatched and grew until finally they flew the nest.
We watched all this for weeks but the very day they flew my husband had gone off on a business trip and missed it!! Lol It was so sweet watching them standing on the edge of the box, you could almost see them willing themselves to fly!! I like to think the birds on our feeder now are those little ones.

Rosie, when my husband de ticks the hedgepogs, he pops them in a bowl of luke warm water, it makes them uncurl so he can get to their face and get the ticks. They don't seem to mind the bath!!
 
Oh, Oh !! And I want some pygmy goats lol (and an alpaca or two ;) ). Do you think the park would count as common grazing land? lol

The trouble with me is that I love all the amenities of urban living but still hanker after my rural roots livestock wise.

Lentil - we are in the process of sorting out a wildlife cam for next spring to capture the sparrows stripping the pampas grass heads for nesting material - the all line up on the fence and take turns to grab beakfulls - absolutely charming to watch :D (it's OK - the pampas grass is in the back garden - no 'signpost' for swingers involved ;) ).

Yes Rosie - do pop onto YouTube - the hedgies seem to love swimming :) Too cute!
 
MollyMolly said:
Oh, Oh !! And I want some pygmy goats lol (and an alpaca or two ;) ). Do you think the park would count as common grazing land? lol

The trouble with me is that I love all the amenities of urban living but still hanker after my rural roots livestock wise.

Lentil - we are in the process of sorting out a wildlife cam for next spring to capture the sparrows stripping the pampas grass heads for nesting material - the all line up on the fence and take turns to grab beakfulls - absolutely charming to watch :D (it's OK - the pampas grass is in the back garden - no 'signpost' for swingers involved ;) ).

Yes Rosie - do pop onto YouTube - the hedgies seem to love swimming :) Too cute!
Click to expand...


Well I never knew that about pampas grass. My old Aunt and Uncle had a huge one in their front garden lol now I'm seeing them in a whole new light!! Wow....you live and learn ;)
 
I am desperate for chickens but we have foxes living under our shed so it's a no go. We do have a blackbird and robins, and a couple of squirrels but I would LOVE to hedgehogs to visit and I LOVE that their babies are called hoglets!
 
lickthelid said:
oh no "I want" nearly always gets, lest I have to move on to foot stamping and breath until turning blue-ness! ;)
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Lol - I found it easy to ignore the foot stamping and a tickle sorted out the breath-holding, but if you were to do a Violet Elizabeth act that would be totally different!

I live in a very urban area and birds in my locality are mostly pigeons, crows and magpies with the occasional pied wagtail. Work is on the edge of town and my office looks out onto a variety of trees with fields beyond so there is a greater variety of birds - lots of bluetits and great tits, greenfinch and the crows nest in one of the fir trees every year. On the allotment I get thrushes (who eat the snails), blackbirds and robins as well as the various tits. I rarely ever see starlings - Harrogate is clearly too refined for them! In summer I can see swallows, house martins and swifts from all three places and we have red kites in the area which are glorious to watch as they circle around and it's amazing to watch small birds harry them at nesting time.

(I also have a resident toad living under the lotty shed and I've seen hedgehogs around the site too, but the slugs and snails still flourish - sigh!)

My sister keeps chickens - they live in a converted summer house with a large netted run. Luxury, utter luxury!
 
Thanks to the park we do get a good variety of birds in the garden :) Sparrows of course plus Blue Tits, Great Tits, Greenfinches, wagtails (I love wagtails - such amusing little birds to watch) lots of Blackbirds and Robins and the odd Thrush. Lots of Crows, Magpies and Woodpigeons too of course, who drive me to distraction by flinging all the leaves from my gutters at this time of year (the leaves being one of the major disadvantages of being so close to the park!). Plus we have Woodpeckers in the woods of the park :D Loads of bats too, which I love to watch at dusk :)

I don't actually feed the bids at home as I have 5 cats and it feels a bit like encouraging them to their doom (though in general my cats are far too well fed and lazy to bother catching them) - but I have a feeding station at work, where we often get nests in the hedges :D
 
NotsofattyPatty said:
Lol - I found it easy to ignore the foot stamping and a tickle sorted out the breath-holding, but if you were to do a Violet Elizabeth act that would be totally different!

I live in a very urban area and birds in my locality are mostly pigeons, crows and magpies with the occasional pied wagtail. Work is on the edge of town and my office looks out onto a variety of trees with fields beyond so there is a greater variety of birds - lots of bluetits and great tits, greenfinch and the crows nest in one of the fir trees every year. On the allotment I get thrushes (who eat the snails), blackbirds and robins as well as the various tits. I rarely ever see starlings - Harrogate is clearly too refined for them! In summer I can see swallows, house martins and swifts from all three places and we have red kites in the area which are glorious to watch as they circle around and it's amazing to watch small birds harry them at nesting time.

(I also have a resident toad living under the lotty shed and I've seen hedgehogs around the site too, but the slugs and snails still flourish - sigh!)

My sister keeps chickens - they live in a converted summer house with a large netted run. Luxury, utter luxury!
Click to expand...



Oh...I forgot about the Red Kites, we have them in our area too! There is never a time when you can't look up into the sky and see them flying around and hear them calling. A couple of years ago, my husband put some chicken out on the grass and then sat in the corner of the garden with his camera for what seemed like hours, waiting for one to swoop down and grab the chicken! He waited and waited......and waited!! They flew low, they clearly saw it but probably could see him too!!
Anyway , after waiting forever, he gave up and just as he was opening the back door to come in with his back to the garden, I looked up and saw a shadow descending behind him!! Yes, the Red Kite had come down into our garden and pick up the chicken.....it was huge!! I couldn't stop laughing, my husband had completely missed it...it was a real Kit Kat moment!
We often see them swooping down over a neighbours garden, they put chicken skins out for them.

With all this these wildlife stories, you might think I live in the country, I don't!! I live in Reading!! lol We are on the outskirts though and just across the M4 it is very rural and full of farms!
 
Ah it's nice to hear all the varied wildlife! We have a little fox family but fortunately they haven't bothered with Egg, Spoon, Pip & Squeak the chickens. I will be more wary in winter when food is thinner on the ground for them but hopefully the coop is secure.
I love to see the Red Kites- your poor husband just missing it take the chicken!
I wonder if Patty sees many? When we do jobs in north Leeds we tend to spot them, especially round Otley.
Another alpaca fan here :D
 
Yay!! Yay for Fannie :eek:
 
Just realised that that emoticon actually looks like me in my profile pic.

Hmm
 
LOL Sam ... I did actually work with a bloke years ago who's wife was called Fannie. He was a complete a**hole who's general life policy seemed to be to make other people's lives as unpleasant as possible (which given that he was a director was pretty easy :( ) One of his classics that I'll never forget was his oft and loudly spoken desire to 'get that thing out of here' about a transexual colleague of mine.

Anyyyyway (I always get to the point of my stories eventually lol) - at any company 'do' that included other halves and alcohol we would all amuse ourselves by spending the evening enquiring as to how/ where his wife was ... 'Oh hello J - where's your Fannie?', 'I've not seen your Fannie tonight J', 'Did you bring your Fannie?', 'Your Fannie's looking well' and so on add infinitum. Peurile? Hell yes, but we enjoyed it ;)
 
Ah yes our higher uppers can be a pain! I remember when I volunteered to be H&S officer for the establishment. There was a fairly new no smoking policy inside the building but the team manager continued to smoke in his office which annoyed everyone else because of the stink!! I warned my manager that I was going to raise that point with him during the next inspection. I duly warned him (brave little worker!!) but he wouldn't heed my warning so I rang County Hall to discuss same. They said because he was a manager they'd deal with it! He never smoked again in that office and told other managers who asked why..."Put it like this, a member of my team grassed me up!!"
I'll give him his due...he didn't bear an grudges! :D
 
Oh god the fun I could have with someone like your colleague Molly. Fannie, let's face it, is an uh-mazing name that, these days amounts to child abuse if you were to inflict it on offspring!!
 
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