Friday 3 July 2009

Slug busters


This year we seem to have a distinct lack of slug and snail activity in the garden. Much could be put down to the dry weather but I think it is also thanks to our night time visitors.We have always had a good population of toads and a few frogs in the garden, which I should imagine can only increase once we have the pond. However over the last few nights we have been visited regularly by two rather large hedgehogs and we think possibly younger ones, searching for spilt offerings from the bird table.( I have yet to manage to photograph them)

When we first moved here we did have hedgehogs visit but they soon stopped once the badgers made an appearance. As lovely as it was to see the badgers, especially the year the whole family including young ones arrived, they are extremely destructive, flattening plants, digging up the garden and worst of all for the children, they killed the pet rabbits. So it is nice to have the hedgehogs back with their familiar noisy snorting and loud munching of yet another snail !

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

we have badgers here. they are a bit destructive as you say - they leave characteristic holes in the lawn, make tunnels under our fencing, had a party with our beer slug traps, and dug up himself's prize pumpkin plant, as it was in a tasty worm filled heap of horsemuck. I do worry about the poultry, as I know they will take them given a chance, but so far so good, and i do like to see them around

Sandra said...

They do cause mixed feelings.Foxes are the same. There are a family of foxes in the front field and the young ones are being taught to hunt...fantastic to watch, but you know one slip up by us and they will have all the hens!