Birds, Bears and Squirrels

The squirrels have worn a track across the lawn. There are four of them now. The neighbours find them cute (ha! that doesn't work on me!) and feed them continually. If there is a break in the peanut supply the squirrels sit on the fence looking in at the kitchen window, waiting to be fed.

Our lawn has become pockmarked with squirrel caches and one square foot of the lawn has been so popular that it is now a spongy mass of fresh green seedling (presumably peanuts sprouting).

The track across the lawn goes in a straight line, just six inches wide, so I move the bench so that one of its legs blocks the trail. I have a picture of a squirrel running along, out of the bottom of the hedge on its regular route and colliding with it, like some Looney Tunes cartoon character.

Winter Visitors

I've just had an order from Canada for Rough Patch (which includes a page on The Search for a Squirrel-proof Bird Feeder). Heidi Van Impe writes:

The climate where I live, in Vancouver, BC, is very much like English weather (or so my family and I figure as that is where my folks live...Tamworth Staffs.) My little city of Vancouver on the west coast gets the Canadian winter moderated by the ocean, but take a few hours drive east into the province/east into Canada and you get the true Canadian North climate in winter. Anyway, the point of this introductory ramble on weather patterns : ) is to tell you how much fun I have reading your online website as many of the same critters and weather patterns happen here also. I think we might be about two weeks apart with things blooming, dying etc and we don't get some of your birds, I reckon, but then again you don't have to contend with our bears. I get rather jealous reading about your bird feeders as come fall, the bears come down off the mountain and raid the seed and suet feeders. It's quite a shock to look out one's patio doors and see a bear sitting pleased as can be on your back lawn, snacking on something. So alas, the backyard is birdfeeder free.

(My drawing is of a sloth bear in the London Zoo, enjoying investigating an old log that it had been given).

Link

Slowconfusion: collage, acrylics, watercolours and sketches by Heidi Van Impe.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk