Perhaps not the wildlife photograph of the year......

About to put 20kg of birdseed in the plastic bin when I spotted a pair of ears sticking out of the seed scoop:

M

My new freind might have been in there for a few minuites or 48 hours, plenty to eat but no water

anyway he bolted sharpish when I got him out.

You need some of these then ? Found in neighbours "empty" garage

A friend used to keep his large 7-1/4" g. loco in a wooden shed, with an old blanket over it, and a low-wattage electric lamp in the firebox (steel boiler). Very cosy for one field-mouse, who made a little nest for himself on the footplate!

Let's wait for one of the Aussie members to send a pic of a workshop python, or a North American send a pic of a bear or wolf. All I've got here in NZ is workshop mice and rats, although considerably fewer, after more aggressive control measures.

Haha. No pythons here. My mate up the road has them in his shed roof though. They feed on his chickens.  I have a four-foot-long monitor lizard strolls past occasionally. But these guys are regular visitors. Sadly no pea hens amongst them so they never fan their tails out on full display. Still pretty cool to watch as they cruise past, pecking at the garden beds for delicious bugs or whatever it is peacocks eat. They were originally residents of the landscaped tropical gardens of the nearby old sugar mill, which is now long gone but the gardens' residents live on and stroll the encroaching suburbia.

Don't ask me about the sideways pic. This site has a mind of its own. Perhaps a passing mod can remedy, please?

Edited By Hopper on 08/08/2022 14:33:43

I had this visitor to my garden a few years ago.

He just wandered around the garden eating things. He could see me but didn't seem too concerned. All those weeds are now cleared away ready for planting.

All in my Back Yard...

Thank you Speedy, I must decline your kind offer as we have a jack russell and she is very "fond" of cats. My little fieldmouse cannot match the other posters visitors !

Who would need model engineering to fill their lives when you have such a beautiful creature to be friends with - WOW indeed!

What a remarkable situation to be in on a daily basis. I like to think that i have never been envious of anyone or anything but have to say that could well change my outlook Joseph - you are indeed a very fortunate guy.

Nearest thing I have is the Rottweiler 'Rocky' next door who puts his head over the fence on a daily basis for a Bonio - Big dog but soft as a brush

Best - Tug

I think Joe has all the top trumps there, our recent visitors are a hedgehog, a grass snake and the neighbours cats. Red kites circle constantly and sometimes mistake a bread crust for something more to their liking. It always reminds me of 633 squadron when a kite tries to collect a tidbit from my tiny garden..

Mike

Hope this works! He's beautiful and worth a bit of trouble.

Edited By Anthony Kendall on 09/08/2022 09:29:19

Thank you much for that! Yes he is quite striking right-way-up

We have in our front garden a hedgehog house that I knocked up because I found a visiting hedgehog late one evening. Put out a wildlife camera trained on the house and placed hedgehog food and water every night, we have not one but four hedgehogs visiting for food and yes all four were there together at one time so definitely four, we also get a visit from a fox at about three in the morning and the hedgehogs are not fazed by the fox as they are rubbing shoulders eating from the same food bowl, also get visiting cats but they seem suitably unimpressed with hedgehog food so they don’t partake. One of the hogs, a small one probably female has taken to sleeping in the house during the day, so hopefully she will use it to hibernate in. Quite a few years ago our vets asked us to release an injured but convalescing hedgehog in our garden, I built her a house and in the run up to winter supplied plenty of food and hay for her house, she hibernated and the following year presented five baby hoglets, so hopefully a repeat with our current visitor. Have a number of infra red monochrome videos of our visitors but still working out how to transfer so that I could post them on the website, probably have to resort to getting my grandson involved, as usual the younger generation are way ahead of me with technology. We need to give our wildlife as much help as we can in these challenging times, if anybody wants to encourage hedgehogs then please use commercially available foods, they are a balanced formula and feeding the wrong foods can easily damage hedgehog health if they don’t get the right vitamins, never give them milk because I understand that hedgehogs are lactose intolerant and can suffer greatly if fed milk. Hedgehog foods are easily available from garden centres and Amazon. Dave W

Looked out of my window this evening to see this on my deck:

This is in Mississauga - 3rd largest city in Ontario - close to the downtown core. Looks like it's settled in for the night.

I've seen coyotes walking bold-as-brass up the street too. (Beats bears though.)

Edited By Peter Greene 🇨🇦 on 10/08/2022 01:21:46

That is beautiful Peter!

Rosalie used to wander around our village and sleep wherever she came to rest at the end of the day.

Then you have the not so welcome ones. This one was very expensive

+

Until she was made into sausages?

Graham, I sympathise, I keep Koi Carp and used to have problems with Herons, we live on the edges of a marsh, my Koi have grown somewhat since those days being mostly between 3 and 4 foot, bit too much of a mouthful for a Heron but they can still injure the fish by stabbing with their beaks. I found the best way of deterring Herons and Seagulls from raiding ponds when the fish were small was an electric fence stretched around the periphery of the pond, there are proprietary items sold specifically for that purpose, The raiders soon learn that the wire they try to step over gives them a nasty sting, after a few weeks they all learn and you can actually switch off the current and it still acts as a deterrent, I have seen seagulls land walk up to the edge of the pond and then back away from the wire and the current isn’t running but they have learnt that they could get stung. Dave W

We kept one of those tubular whiskey boxes for mice.

Successive cats Ben, Jerry and Ember would bring mice in through the catflap and release them as dancing partners in the house. Tubular boxes were popular with the mice as they tired of the dance, because cat couldn't get 'em if they ran in.

We managed to stop that with Jerry by setting the catflap to out-only. She learned to get around that by banging the flap till it bounced away from its frame enough to get her nose under it, so she could get in on her own when she wanted, but couldn't manage it with prey.

Must've caught half-a-dozen or more in cardboard tubes and put them out with leftover chips or suchlike, a field or two away.