StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Now that Springwatch is getting started for this year, I was wondering who else is getting unusual visitors in the garden.

Normally, we don't see anything more than various birds (starlings, sparrows, blackbirds, pigeons, the occasional blue tit or goldfinch), but starting at the beginning of April, we've had a fox turning up about every two or three days. He'll appear mid-afternoon, usually fast asleep, curled up in the overgrown back of the garden; wake up, scratch, yawn, perform a pretzel scratch, then amble over to the next sunny patch and flop down into a long flat orange fluffy sausage. Sometimes all I can see is an ear or a hairy hind end, poking out from behind a bush. The only other time I've seen a fox live was a few years ago, just a brief trotting-across-the-road evening sighting.

Anyone else seen something unusual this year?

Not directly in my garden, but Devon has had an invasion of bald-people hating Eagle owls in Exeter, and a slightly confused bearded vulture turned up on Dartmoor last week. Here's hoping the local Peregrines don't run them out of town!

I keep expecting the parakeet swarm in the South East to head west for the warmth, but nothing yet, sadly.

Hmmm...
Apart from the horses and average songbirds, I have seen:
roe deer
deer (stags, too)
fallow dear
wild boar
falcons
bussards
stork
crane
hedgehogs
stone and tree marten
3 or 4 kinds of frogs and toads I can't keep apart
lizards
blindworms
garter and grass snakes
adders
South Russian Tarantula
rabbits
owls
bats
emperor and other big dragonflies
praying and other mantides
foxes (they sometimes walk with me when I work, keeping a 3m safety distance, curiously watching what stupid stuff humans do all day.)
badgers (usually in an area of debris that was something that belonged to me. fuckers...)

There's a beaver that trundles through the back alley every few days. I think he lives in one of the nearby drainage ditches. Definitely a beaver, nothing else has a tail like that.

We have the usual sparrows, finches, black birds, jays, and mourning doves. There's a hawk that likes eyeballing my koi but I have a net and a beagle to keep it away. We also of course get desert lizards, which are pretty neat.

Sadly garden wildlife here in South Wales is limited to neighborhood cats, one very lost and confused Labrador (good thing he had tags on his collar) and the occasional blind drunk student. Though I did glimpse a few robins around Christmas time.

I like up high in an apartment building in the middle of a city. There is a tree outside my window. It hosts songbirds. And by that I mean birds that chirp sort of nice. No idea what kind they are.

Rabbits, squirrel, more birds than you can name, and a possum at my house.

Mom's house has all of the above, plus a herd of deer, a couple skunks, and a bear that lumbers through every once in a while.

Rabbits! Stay the fuck out of the street! This is my domain, not yours, and every time I accidentally squish one of you to prove it, I feel bad for a lot longer than you do.

Wabbit stew! Huhuhuhuhuhhuhuhuhuhuh!

U.P. Cinnabar wrote:Wabbit stew! Huhuhuhuhuhhuhuhuhuhuh!

From "Rabbit Fire:"

Wabbit season.

Don't go against Bugs. Just don't. He is the patron Trickster God of western civilization. You will lose in a way that makes other people laugh.

Raw Shark wrote:Don't go against Bugs. Just don't. He is the patron Trickster God of western civilization. You will lose in a way that makes other people laugh.

I have seen Bugs get bested only twice in my entire life. One when he stole the locks off the Panama Canal, and the second time was vs the Gremlin.

And, of course, the end of "Rabbit Fire:"

Raw Shark wrote:Don't go against Bugs. Just don't. He is the patron Trickster God of western civilization. You will lose in a way that makes other people laugh.

Don't forget that in Daffy he's up against the ancient Egyptian god of frustration.

On my late-night walks for exercise, I have seen:
Deer. I think they're black-tailed deer or mule deer . . . the one I saw last night sure had the ears for a mule comparison
A skunk, possibly. I heard a noise in the ditch and just caught what looked like the tail end of something black and white vanishing.
Millipedes. At least two different varieties, one all black and maybe three inches long, the other about two inches long, black with yellow spots down the sides.
Pill bugs. My brief internet research has informed me that there are two types of critters called "pill bugs". One is an isopod, part of the crustacean family, also known as the wood louse. The other is the pill millipede, a very short millipede which looks very much like a wood louse, probably because of convergent evolution. I have not yet bothered to pick them up and examine them to see which I'm dealing with.

That's about it. Between lots of animals being diurnal and human night vision being kind of poor, I haven't seen much.

The isopod pill bugs usually smell of ammonia. That's one way to tell them apart from the millipede variety.

The is the deep sea big cousin of the common garden isopod. No, I have no idea who the guy in the photo is, I just grabbed this example off the web. It does make for a nice size comparison, though.

Broomstick wrote:No, I have no idea who the guy in the photo is, I just grabbed this example off the web.

He's a man who is a lot more brave about things that could happen to his genitals than I am, I can tell you that much.

SpottedKitty wrote:Don't forget that in Daffy he's up against the ancient Egyptian god of frustration.

It is one of my dearest hopes that I will live long enough to paint a Screaming Daffy on the side of my starfighter in my twilight years. I might not shoot a lot of Minbari down when they come for us, but the crew of one of their fishy frigates will know sheer terror as I kamikaze my wrinkled ass into them in the true self-destruct fashion of my mascot.

Broomstick wrote:The isopod pill bugs usually smell of ammonia. That's one way to tell them apart from the millipede variety.

The is the deep sea big cousin of the common garden isopod. No, I have no idea who the guy in the photo is, I just grabbed this example off the web. It does make for a nice size comparison, though.

Can you eat that?

Raw Shark wrote:

SpottedKitty wrote:Don't forget that in Daffy he's up against the ancient Egyptian god of frustration.

It is one of my dearest hopes that I will live long enough to paint a Screaming Daffy on the side of my starfighter in my twilight years. I might not shoot a lot of Minbari down when they come for us, but the crew of one of their fishy frigates will know sheer terror as I kamikaze my wrinkled ass into them in the true self-destruct fashion of my mascot.

Commander Shark engages his afterburners and sets a collision course for the nearest Minbari War Cruiser. As the massive ship fills his cockpit, he unleashes a fearsome battle cry, "YOU'RE DESPICABLE!!!!!!!!"

*BOOM*

Purple wrote:Can you eat that?

I guarantee that, if you have working jaws, you could at least one time.

Borgholio wrote:Commander Shark engages his afterburners and sets a collision course for the nearest Minbari War Cruiser. As the massive ship fills his cockpit, he unleashes a fearsome battle cry, "YOU'RE DESPICABLE!!!!!!!!"

*BOOM*

Raw Shark wrote:

Purple wrote:Can you eat that?

I guarantee that, if you have working jaws, you could at least one time.

Good point. I walked into that one.
Although it does little to help me classify this thing on a cuddly pet - food item scale. Since it looks like it could fit neatly into both. Sort of like a bunny really only with more legs.