All Creatures Great And Small

[LadyCG]

My husband has found five frogs in our garden this morning. Lovely little creatures.

I wouldn't mind seeing a hedgehog - although we did have one under our table one night in Turkey.

What critters frequent your garden?

[LadyCG]

Oh that's sad to hear but it must be lovely to encounter such a variety of wildlife.

[DTCwordfan]

thailand - one of my favourite ones as to frogs was staying at the Phuket Yacht Club at the southern end of the island on R&R from China. Back then it was part of the Mandarin Oriental Group and fab in being way out, peaceful, great 'rooms' and particularly the food. We used to take one of their suites at the top of the property, on stilts, with lovely views and an enormous balcony. Walking down to dinner and back, we would hear all these tiny frogs, tens and tens if not more of them, going 'Bpplzpplz Bpplzpplz' and so on - imagine the sound of a wet fart being issued and that was what we named them, 'The Fart Frogs'......

[choux]

One has to be careful for that which one wishes. Nature is not always nicely selective ;) We have field mice, mice, rats, slow worms, grass snakes, vipers, toads, hedgehogs, a badger that woke us up one night and others unseen that just got the lawn up. Foxes and deer.

Birds as one might expect but also owls perched in the trees at night, sparrow hawks quite often, a buzzard has come down onto the back garden and we had an awkward heron than perched on the ridge tiles, much to the annoyance of the dog for quite a while. We had a poor old racing pigeon resting on the roof for over 24 hours and eventually I managed to catch it in a cage and that enabled us to read its ID ring on its leg. I rang the owner in Barnstable, Devon who wanted me to send it back to her via courier. "Barney" stayed with us for a couple of days and was well rested and fed before I released him - he spent an hour or so on the roof before flying off looking quite strong.

[choux]

I forgot moles and copious grey squirrels.

[dustypuss]

Foxes don't eat hedge hog unless there desperate. Free tooth picks.

[Hopkirk]

Toads, occasional voles, a young hedgehog and recently next door but ones rabbit.

[LadyCG]

OH nearly sliced one of the frogs in half with his spade. He'd have been mortified if he had done.

[ladybirder]

LCG you've reminded me of a lovely friend of mine who threw some bleach down the drain in her garden. When she'd finished she looked down into the drain and saw a little frog looking up at her. She was so upset she quickly got some water and poured that over it.

[LadyCG]

Oh gosh, I hope the poor mite survived (but I doubt it did).

I remember driving through Alvechurch once and a rabbit came running out of nowhere and went under the car but when I looked in the rear view mirror I saw it run across the road so I think it was unscathed. Phew!

[Caran]

I used to have deers visiting our garden. They would eat carrots from my hand. Then the powers that be decided on a cull.they killed about 500. The ones that were left didn’t know the way up to our garden so we haven’t had any visitors since

[barry1010]

Muntjac deer, fox, badger, barn owl, cats, buzzards, sparrowhawk, frogs, newts, grey squirrels. An injured bat on one occasion.
Long time since we saw hedgehogs, probably because of the badgers and foxes.
Red kites are fairly recent flyovers and the blerdy parakeets are now only about a mile away.
There was a grouse one winter and an escaped peacock one summer, we were glad to see the back of him.