Hi Annie
Sorry to hear your previous reply disappeared – it’s sometimes a bit of a mystery why they do that. Although I’ve found if there is more than one link in a post they seem to disappear. But seems there are other reasons, too.
The small hog didn’t come straight back, but there is a smallish one visiting now, who may or may not be be the same one. It seems to be a male and I’ve discovered one of the adults visiting at the moment is a female – finally an adult female visitor!
Sorry to hear the rat returned and made such a nuisance of himself. But don’t blame you not wanting to give him another hog box to ruin. I’ve given up using the boxes for feeding. The hogs seem happy foraging for kitten biscuits on the lawn. They still visit the water just outside the old feed box but no sign of them going in. I’ll have to give it a good clean out and hope someone uses it for hibernation – that is if it survives attacks from insects! There’s always something!
That’s nice that your friend is getting hog visits too, now. You will be able to compare notes.
I finally got a bat detector. As I thought there are a fair few bats around. My mini copse seemed particularly popular when the buddleia were in full flower and I guess lots of moths around. There seem to be a few different types, but I haven’t worked out which ones yet. It’s a fairly basic detector and only tells the wavelength. I’ve tried finding some recordings on line to compare, but haven’t found many yet. But just love hearing the sounds of them. I have seen some of them, but sometimes prop the detector on the window and wait for the sound.
I was very excited yesterday to see a fairly large grass snake curled up on my path in a patch of sun. The path is between the copse and the wild flower patch. Unfortunately it disappeared when I went to get my camera, so I don’t know which side it went to. It’s probably not surprising as I’ve seen a few frogs out there – so maybe less frogs now! I’m a bit worried for it, though, with all the strimmers being used round here.
Glad to hear you still have lots of hogs visiting. Sounds like very well behaved hogs – even washing their paws! Lucky them having special holes in the wrought iron fence. I hope you continue to get lots of visits.
