Egypt4u

If I could get zoo-do I'd be piling it everywhere but no such luck as no zoos or anything like that around here. Am left to my own nefarious devices.

Apparently heavily scented soap is supposed to be something of a deterrent too. Got some of that out there now. Will see if the deers are repelled or attracted to the scent AND if I see a deer outside in the rain scrubbing up I'll definitely be flummoxed!

The bluetits have been absent for a couple of weeks and we thought they might have abandoned the box. This morning however there has been frantic activity so hopefully eggs are being laid. March 9 was rather early in the year when I first spotted them at the box.

Good news last evening when this little lady visited us. She obviously has cubs and these will be 2 or 3 weeks old if she is now foraging with the dog. Have started putting some cheap dogfood and jam sandwiches out for them from today. Got to have a healthy litter and they should be seen in a week or two.


I have also installed a new bird bath so they all have plenty to drink.


I love the springtime, thank goodness Jan and Feb are now far behind us

Hopefully your Momma fox will have no food problems for her kits and I like your birdbath too.

I'm anxious to get home as I have my birdhouse on a pole in the backyard and have also acquired a hummingbird feeder and regular long bird feeder to attach to it to get birds feeding. I've also got another feeder to install that also holds suet cakes on either end. I haven't put them up yet as I haven't been able to find (til now) any sort of hangers (the wrought iron hangers that you can hang plant baskets off of). Had to wait 'til spring for the shops to bring them in.

I don't yet have a birdbath (yet) but thinking I need one out back somewhere.

Awe! would love to see the baby foxes

We are really hoping to get to know this years family Kiya so maybe, just maybe they will bring the cubs when we are outside with a camera.

Watch this space

Great pictures Grandad and you are very lucky to see them in your garden, if they all come to visit you will need a big plate of jam (jello) sandwiches for all the pups, they will be picknicking on your lawn. By the way have you done something to that picture?
Squirell Nutkin seems to like the bird bath, so he had better stay clear of Mr & Mrs Reynard
Like you I am so glad that the better weather seems to be here at last, it has seemed such a long Winter.

Horus, re the vixen pic. It was 7.30 in the evening and quite dusk, and through glass so I had to sharpen and adjust the colour a bit to improve the detail. The original was quite dull.

BTW. I saw the dog this evening and he has a severe limp of a back leg. We had a dog with a similar limp last year so, who knows, might be the same one, last years father of four. If so, the limp doesn't seem to interfere with him doing the business

Ah! I thought that I spotted a bit of 'jiggery pokery' going on (only joking)
Maybe as you say it is the same dog as last year and he has a healed injury to his leg.

Will be looking and watching for baby photos - birds, foxes and squirrels too

Nothing much to report from my little wildlife corner. I am slowly gaining the confidence of the foxes and on Saturday evening I put food out at about 7.30 and whistled, and almost immediately the dog came. I was sitting only 2 or 3 metres from the food and he came straight down.
Very amusing because one dish had dog meat and the other, jam sarnies....he ignored the meat and went straight to the sarnies.....they are known to have a sweet tooth

The vixen did come down but she is much more shy and timid. Hope to see the cubs in a couple of weeks, 4 last year so maybe a good litter this year. Got to keep feeding them to keep them healthy

This is the dog on Saturday evening

Awe! he looks a hungry little fella hope he enjoyed it

Great piccie Grandad, but on a serious note, can you swap the bread from white to Wholegrain or Brown? there is not a lot of nutrition in white bread and they may be filling up on the wrong stuff, happens with wildfowl especially Swans, so I think that a few sausage sarnies would be in order

We are on brown now, white was the only cheap one available. They didn't complain though

Sausage sarnies? They'll be lucky We have a sausage toastiw in Marks for a snack but they are not getting any......might use some of the doggie chunks in sarnies, that's a good idea

What about a nice T bone each then saying as it's Easter?

Really warm today and sat outside watching the birds. There seems to be far fewer this year, can't understand why, but a very large one flew across the gap in the trees where a 150 year old had been felled.


There is some significance to this aircraft. It had just taken off from Manston, about 12 miles direct from me. Manston was a US air base at the end of the war and into the fifties. It has a concrete runway 1.7 miles long and has been an emergency airfield since the Americans left. The A380 conducted test flights there last April.
In recent years there have been a number of attempts to make the airport (Manton International) commercially viable but all have failed, the last being KLM afew weeks ago. There is some cargo flights in and out and the picture shows one of the 'my CARGO' fleet. The future is now very uncertain and I expect that the airfield will be developed with housing.

Oh! that big bird would have been scaring all the little ones away from the feeders I see below in your pic, great capture

Nice sharp picture Grandad, although I reckon that failure to turn it into an international hub may be blessing in disguise for you.

Just reading this thread and just have the visual image of Grandad's backyard being a veritable ZOO! He's got EVERYTHING out back there!!

Expecting to see the cubs any day now although Mrs G did catch sight of one on Tuesday evening with the dog fox.
I sat by the backdoor behind curtains for over an hour last evening, camera poised, but all that happened was that the parents came individully to take the strawberry jam sandwiches that I constantly replenished. No sight of any cubs though
I did find the vixens facial expressions amusing though and put 6 together as a collage. Sorry some of the text has cut off but you get the message

It looks though it enjoyed that sandwich