Hobbies and Crafts

Go on Jane! You wouldn't change your garden. But it will probably look better once the tree surgeons have been. Round here in Tenerife North the 'council' gardeners have been busy cutting back trees and shrubs and everywhere looks much tidier and lighter.

I love to sit on the patio here and watch the hawk (like a Kestrel) soaring above me while it searches for food. At the weekend there were a pair of them. They are so graceful but not as quiet as I thought, they have a squeaky cry. Not as noisy as the paraqueets though that always sound as if they are squabbling among themselves.

Kandj
Yes they are the birds that do the V shape.They are very noisy too.A few years ago we had loads that landed in next doors garden as the have a small 'Lake' They would
arrive at the same time every day and then all take off together to go elsewhere.Sadly my neighbours have let the 'Lake' go to wrack and ruin and the geese no longer come.It was an amazing sight to see them all fly low just over our house every day ,but they did leave very huge Poos :-S :-S,and when I say huge ..they were lol

I will certainly be on watch when the tree surgeons are here,but we have had them before and they were brilliant.So I have no worries really.They would never cut a tree with nesting birds.They are going to be here for about 2 and half days doing all the work !..and it s costing us a flipping bomb :-S.But we can't do it .The Yew Hedge alone is 10 feet deep (at the thickest) and about 120 feet long,and then we have the other trees that need seeing too.I sometimes think I would love a nice courtyard garden with nice pots and some trellis with climbing plants .But then I wouldn't have
all my trees for the birds.......We have had the Green Woodpecker back on the lawn today :-D

Wow Lesley, that must have been amazing. Are these the noisy geese that usually form a V shape in the sky?

Today we had a magnificent looking flock of Canadian geese pass over our house, that's the first I've seen of them this summer/autumn :-D

Lesley x

kandj lets hope your tree grows back bigger and thicker than before it was sabotaged .

One of our daughters partners is cutting our hedge this coming weekend (fingers crossed) and I have no qualms about it done this time of year, but I will NOT have the hedge cut between early May and late September, that's following on from what my dad taught me.

Lesley x

Christine, thanks for the sympathy and kind words. I had accepted my neighbours offer to "prune" my tree and hadn't expected that he would decimate it when I was out!!
Looks like I got off light compared to your neighbour whose tree was cut right down...... that is just unbelievable and would have started WW3 in my street.
I have certainly learned the hard way and will never, ever agree to anyone chopping and hacking away trees or hedges in our garden ever again.
The shocking reality is that we planted the tree almost 40 years ago and we won't be around to witness the tree branches back to their original compact growth again.

Jane, I do hope you are right and the birds are tempted back with the feeders I have managed to fasten on to the tree trunk. Good Luck on 7th October. I hope you will be around to supervise the tree felling, learn by my mistake please.

I'm sure the birds will find their way back especially with lots of food to tempt them.What a stupid neighbour :-S :-S.Obviously not a bird lover.
I am still fretting about having our massive Yew hedge cut down by about 8 foot ,and a big Fir by 10 foot.The birds are still so busy.It is all going to happen on the 7th Oct.
I think I might have to move the feeders to a different part of the garden soon .The one I have stuck on my window will have to come down too while the work is being done.

You have my complete sympathy kandj. There is a short service road behind my house which is for the use of the owners of the 5 houses that were built there. One man keeps doing exactly the same thing to my hawthorn hedge and other neighbours greenery. It is not even as though the hedge is overhanging his garden!

The man's wife kept pestering a previous neighbour to let them prune her tree. She kept saying no but they harrassed her so much she said ok to shut them up. She came home to find the tree had been chopped down to the ground! They had employed a tree surgeon, but he had not even checked with my neighbour to see if she consented to the 'execution'. He just climbed over her back fence and did the deed.

The moral of this story is NEVER give anyone permission to do anything to your trees/hedges. Do it yourself or supervise someone to do it for you, 'cos once it's down there's no putting it back up!

I have calmed down now and pondered what I could do to encourage the birds to still use my garden tree even though their once safe home is now "open-plan"

I have bought some new bird feeders for peanuts, fatballs and seeds. With a bit of difficulty I have managed to tie these to the tree trunk and now I am hoping that the birds will feel welcomed enough to return to my lopsided tree.

Not at all pleased today. My neighbour kindly offered to prune the tree at the bottom of our garden.. I could see that he has a new mini-chain new toy and so I agreed thinking it would save me a job.

He did the cutting of branches whilst I was out and when I returned and saw the mess he had made I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. I actually did neither because I think I was in too much shock. (still am!).

The silly man hasn't pruned our tree, but he has cut the branches off with just an inch or so left on the tree trunk near his side and now I have a lopsided tree. Initially it was a nice compact shape but now it looks a complete mess and my poor birds will wonder where their home and safe shelter has gone too and be at risk from neighbourhood cats and rain, hail and snow this coming Winter. Unbelievable!

I've just got in from an out of town open air retail park and the car park was absolutely covered in pied wagtails, it was amazing to see :-D

I'm sure we have hedgehogs in the garden not that I see them but I do see what I think is their poop.

Lesley x

Well I don't know what is going on but I am having to top up the plastic feeder that is stuck on my window several times a day at the moment.It's so busy :-D
The male spotted woodpecker is back too feeding on the coconut.
Yesterday I noticed some telegraph wires full of rows of (I think Sparrows)

There has been a lot of tree cutting going on today.It was along the Public footpath by a little spinney.I think it was the council clearing branches and trees that had come down across the path.Just hope there are no nesting birds.
We are having major work done at the beginning of October so all babies should have fledged and gone by then.The company who is doing the work say they never cut anything down until it is safe to do so.

Kandj.I have seen any sign of Hedgehogs in our garden,which i find strange .I think we had one just the once many moons ago.Maybe they are at the bottom of the garden which is a fair way from the house and we just don't realise they are there .

Usual birds feeding today and all a pleasure to watch. Blackbirds, the regular and not brewers blackbird which I doubt will return here again (boo hoo). Thrushes and sparrows, doves and pigeons who are so big they look almost like hens and we are amazed that they can fly away?!

No more sights of the big hedgehog either. Perhaps he has moved to another garden. A new cat has appeared this week. We have a new neighbour who has moved into the bungalow opposite so perhaps this cat which is mainly white with a black head and tail..... no kidding....... belongs to the new lady. I encourage all neighbours cats because I freak out when mice are around.

Annx if you find a way of keeping magpies away please tell share your secret. I think you will get blue tits nesting whatever way your box faces the most important thing is the size of the hole into the box.

Yes, I had a 'google' AnninG and it seems North or East are the best way to face. That is good as they will be on the left hand side of the garden or the bottom facing the bungalow where I can see the birds go in an out. I'll have to make sure the cats can't get to them though, or the squirrels. I think I'll fix some sort of down facing collar on the pole like vet's use on dogs and cats!!

There is definitely a correct way but I don't know what it is. Maybe googling would help I think north is possibly right though.

Oh Ann ,What a lovely tale about your 'Jack' :-D :-D.Good luck with the bird box.I have no idea which is the best way to place it :-S

We hardly ever see Thrushes around here now. They are such handsome birds too and I miss hearing the tap tap as they smash snail shells on their favourite stones.

There has been the Victory Airshow near here today, so it has been very quiet on the bird front.

I'm attempting to put up my first birdbox on a pole tomorrow. Nextdoor get Bluetits in theirs and it is facing north, but which is the best direction for it to face?

Amazing memories and thank you for sharing the stories Annx...... just so brilliant.

Have had lots of thrushes feeding in our garden today and the usual pigeons, blackbirds and magpies. All are welcomed and keep hubby and myself entertained.

Yes, that might be an idea AnninG.....although there are so many of them this year I would prefer to discourage them particularly the Magpies which although are very handsome birds can be a nuisance because they are so intelligent. I have watched two youngsters play tag around a Yucca plant in the middle of the pebbled area, each trying to sneak around to peck the other without being seen and scuttling behind the plant to hide. It would go on for about to minutes.

As a teenager, I aquired a young Jackdaw from a work colleague who's young son had got it in a swap from another boy at school!! What a clever bird he was. My parents had quite a big garden and lived in a country village then and for a few weeks I would shut Jack in an outhouse at night and he would be fed and let outside in the day. He followed me everywhere if he saw me and would come in the kitchen and if the sink tap was on, he'd be there like a shot, flapping his great wings in the water stream and enjoying an impromptu bath. He was banned from the house when mum spotted him with her marquisite watch and eyeing her rings which she always put on the mantlepiece. After I stopped shutting him in at night he soon worked out which was my bedroom window and at first light would be on the windowsill pecking on the glass to wake me up. I discovered he loved peas when I sat shelling some into a bowl for mum one day. So there would be some left for mum I went down the garden to pick some more and shelled and gave him some. A bad move because a day or two after I spotted him helping himself from the plants. He would sit on the wing mirrors of our old van looking at himself upside down and was happy to travel in it standing on the back of the passenger seat where he had a good view. If I walked down the lane to the village I only had to shout his name and he would soon appear and land on my outstretched arm. I soon had to discourage this as he started to land on other people walking along who didn't know he was tame and it freaked them out quite a bit!! :-S (it was in the 60s when the Hitchcock film 'The Birds' was still fresh in people's memories.) As he was maturing then and I wanted him to live a natural life, I didn't encourage him and we saw him less. Eventually I saw an article in the evening paper........he'd found a mate and was nesting in an old barn in the village.....the farmer couldn't believe how friendly he was, so it had to be him.:-D

Sorry if I have digressed a bit, it was just a happy memory and privilige to have got to know more about these birds.