Fat Birds and Drunk Slugs

We've been getting some surprising pleasure form watching the antics of the birds in our back garden.  I knew there were lots of bird resident locally, and was quite worried about depriving many of them of their nesting places when we cleared the garden.  Hence I made sure that the hedgerow around the walls of the garden was left as it was, with thick ivy and various other shrubs growing up/on/through it.  Last autumn we put up a bird feeder in which Jane puts those fat balls that you can buy; this hangs from the apple tree just outside the new kitchen window and so we have a good view of the goings-on. 

Firstly, there is a healthy flock of house sparrows here (some of who actually used to live in the wall of our house!), and they are quite adept at imitating blue tits and hanging on the feeder cage to peck the fat.  The apple tree has a high canopy and a single low horizontal branch which is bare for the first ten feet, and there are often three or four sparrows perched there waiting whilst others are feeding.  Then there are some Blue Tits and the odd Great Tit - they prefer not to mix with the sparrows who are quite noisy and possessive.  A surprise earlier in the year was the sight of three juvenile Long-Tailed Tits, and we were very happy recently to have further sightings of several of these relatively unusual birds.  There are a couple of Dunnock who only peck at the bits on the ground which have fallen from the feeder, joined occasionally by a Chaffinch.  Finally, there's a Robin who is more than possessive.  He is a little thug who terrorizes the other small birds to claim ownership of the worn patch immediately below the feeder, and occasionally (largely unsuccessfully) tries his own impersonation of  Blue Tit on the feeder.

The heavy mob obviously are ground feeders as well.  There's a number of Wood Pigeons (and the Robin knows his place with them), but there's also a pair of Collared Doves who dislike the Wood Pigeons!  It's a real soap opera out there sometimes.  Blackbirds are rarely seen - there was a melodious one who used to sing beautifully, up and down the street every morning and evening, but he fell silent in August and so I expect a cat got him. The last of the ground feeders is a mouse who I have seen just twice, when the area was quiet. We also have a Wren who lives in the hedge on the wall, but he is rarely seen and is cetainly not tempted by the fat balls.

The front garden wall is unfortunately just the right height for passers-by to sit on. I don't usually mind this, apart from those who sit there talking loudly, especially when we are trying to sleep, but since I did the secondary glazing this has not been such a problem.   I also object to those who sit there eating and drinking (again, usually at night) and then leave their rubbish in our garden. One of these the other day had clearly had too much to drink, as I went to pick up a can in the morning and found that it was still sealed. Shame I don't drink lager...  At the same time I picked up another open can which clearly had some liquid still inside, and found when I tipped it out that it contained about 20 dead slugs!  Obviously the advice to gardeners to use beer in a can to eradiate slugs does work!