Well at least most of them made it Jam Lady, and you seem to have done your bit by keeping the other animals off the eggs.
Sean, that is rather sad, but I suppose sparrowhawks have to eat too. They seem to prefer pigeons round here, and there are enough of them. Not as effective as the peregrine, but can still take a pigeon easily enough.
Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6533 Location: New England (In the US of A)
Posted: Thu Sep 19, 19 9:55 am Post subject:
Was just told that a nearby farmer saw little white spheres as he was plowing a field, and has since hatched them out as two snapping turtles. He has kept raccoons and skunks etc as pets before, but these are his first snappers! Hopefully he researched their requirements well
i hope he has a broom for nudging them when they get bigger
a skunk accident might be a bit of an optical challenge, it loses friends in person, but they will still shout from the gate, a big snapper accident can lose a hand or worse.
they outlasted the dinosaurs for a good reason, they look like a rock and then in a fraction of a second they have a beak full of whatever they bit and ripped.
they can cut a bone as thick as their own neck and i never want to meet them without a decent thickness of laminate glass between us.
a 7 ft gator that acted like a slightly odd dog in a london flat was ok, snappers are in my dangeroos critters list and quite near the top as potential pets go.
cat 4 critters along with honey badgers, some cows and the larger cats.
i put stuff like cobras and the nastier scorpions in cat 4 but in some ways they are easier to handle than the less well armed but grumpier/stealthy ones
as pets they might be a bit interesting if they thrive to large "domesticated" size
Slim
Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 6533 Location: New England (In the US of A)
Posted: Fri Sep 20, 19 11:56 pm Post subject:
Yes, a fear of snapping turtles on the hunt did make me less inclined to skinny dip in ponds as a young boy
Only adders, and I haven't seen too many of those. We don't have them in the woods strangely, although I have seen one in the wood the other side of the main road. Grass snakes are not venomous, but can give a nasty bite which needs treatment as they aren't too particular about tooth hygiene.
the jnr nco's family of sparrows have a new clutch out.
(they have one or two stripes on each wing, different ones have slightly different patterns )
the siblings know me well but the new clutch are comfortable with me moving to within reach or them moving within half reach
something was moving in the hedge, it was a recent fledge jnr nco eating over ripe blackberries and fruit fly larvae 18" from me, when i gave it a grin it grinned back in a slightly port happy sort of way.
i suspect fermenting fruit is quite a thing among the later clutches, that one was well happy.
ps the snakes are sort of ok if one uses common sense (or an axe and garlic butter, i did not say that even about dog murdering adders )
the "wildlife" we have here that can be a bit nasty is mostly invertebrate, i did not enjoy a false widow bite, nor being squirted in the eyes by a rather pretty beetle, nor the deep ulcers i got from some sort of hornet sting, nor being woken in the woods by a red ant sf troop biting and squirting my scrotum with formic acid ( that stung for ages )
as for dangeroos vertebrates we have bats with type three rabies, some wuss snakes and some ace farm animals that can be a bit difficult.
apart from the odd hen party on a york weekend the most dangeroos thing round here in the last long while was my feral "killer kerry".
to meet her in a flood meadow or field before she decided to go walkabout rather than just "go" was dreadful even if you knew what to expect .
afaik she did not "deal with a problem" while she was out for a year or so and after a while it might have been noticed had she hidden the bits
having had one fight with her, she got a headache i got some stress fractures and a flying lesson (a solid palmstrike between the eyes and use her momentum as a springboard for a back flip in the air as she tried to impale me was the best i could manage in the circumstances)
the next time we were close i did distraction and a sample was taken minoan style while the vet looked on horrified, i had explained she was not playful but until the vet saw it she did not really understand what a cow gone bad is like.
i recon farm animals are probably the second most dangeroos critters after humans in the uk
most are nice but the other ones are not
We have no trouble from the hornets, even though they go hawking round our 'yard' quite close to us and I am always wary of beetles, as I know some of them can produce some 'interesting' liquids.
Never having to have had anything to do with cattle, I am always wary if I go through a field of them, but hope the farmer didn't put his wild cattle out where people walk, so either avoid or walk towards confidently.
i suspect the hornets that got me were not the usual uk sort.
temperate rain forest does have some rather unusual life forms and some the nine ladies site invertebrates were pretty feisty to match the landscape
bottom invading beetles
huge aggressive colony wasps(see bag of sugar in a pierced carrier bag thrown 50 m from where you want to be)
squirty beetles that can make one blind for days
very special little black slugs that did extra comedy eyebrow by stealth in the night
we might have brought the scabies but they were quite at home in a temperate rain forest until we got OP on them