Suet feeder found at last!

Glad you spotted it, Fran. Those squirrels obviously didn't want a long return trip to your garden to get their breakfast :)

lol Gee, but it would probably have been more economical than manhandling (squirrelhandling?) the cage and contents this far.

Well done, Fran on spotting the green feeder amongst the greenery ! I reckon the squirrels were planning to bury the whole cage (and food !) to save for a cold winter !

The bushy tailed marauders do some strange things Fran. They sniff around our lawn. Extract a hazel nut, clean it and leave their scent on it. They bury it again, tamping down the grass carefully. They leave a mess where they dug it up too. I put some recycled bulbs in a deepish hole last week and something has tried to dig near them, but not got down as far as I put the bulbs. glad you found that suet cage Fran. What a smashing place for bluebells, but you need crampons. Killer heels would do!

It was brave of you to venture down the bank Fran - did you manage to retrieve it?

Dorjac, that's interesting - wonder why they do that?

Well spotted Fran it must have been difficult to see ,we've had squirrel problems here as well also a Sparrow hawk this morning pinned down my friendly female blackbird and then starting eating it alive ,I cried ! I dashed outside to try to save it but the Hawk grabbed it and flew away , I managed to get a photo of the Hawk holding it down but thought it might upset some people on here :o(

It really is horrible Amy to witness such a kill at close quarters. I have seen this too and it is very upsetting.

Fran it could have been a magpie that moved that cage and emptied it. They are so crafty. They never even came into the garden until the last 2 or 3 years and they do move objects about or fly off with them.

@ TT – it may have been the regular shape of it that made me first notice it; nature doesn’t work so neatly.
It had been a full slab of suet, filling the cage, which was now completely empty, so they must have either eaten it empty or dragged the suet out – but then, they could have done either while the cage was still in my garden.
But maybe they know something about the coming season that we don’t!

@ Dorjac – I had been putting peanuts in shells out, but kept finding them in my plant pots – there were at least 20 in the stone sink when I emptied it prior to giving it away. Took me a while to realise where they’d come from, was thinking, why did the previous tenants plant peanuts? Durr!
In my old place, when I was severely troubled by squirrels, I read that they do a lot of “false burying”, pretend to bury nuts too fool anything that might be watching. I’m sure that was what a lot of the excavations then were about – or the other animals being fooled and coming to dig up a free meal and not finding one!
Found a four-inch-deep hole in one of my troughs a little while ago. I mean, they’ve got the whole flippin’ garden to dig in, why a planter near the house??
Good thing you put the bulbs extra-deep, that might save them. I put heaps of bark chips on my bulbs, though I didn’t plant them as deep as maybe I should have; there’s been a lot of reorganisation since March-April, when most of them went in, so I hope there’ll be enough for a good show next spring.
And next year they should all come up at the proper time, rather than months late cos they were planted months late – there should be carpets of them next time – lol at least that’ll let me know where each ended up!
I’m going to put some steps in (or get someone to put them in!) – bit of wood held with stakes to make each step. Don’t want to make them too obvious (it _is_ public land, after all, or at least, definitely not in my garden!), and I’ll trip the overhanging trees – nearly lost my hat several times on the way up again, but again, don’t want to make it too obvious.
Just beyond where I found the cage is a gap in the hedging; there’s a house beyond, so I assume that’s where the dog came from who came to visit me in the summer. lol I did think of patching that gap, then I thought, bit cheeky, this isn’t actually MY land, after all!
I’ve still got three boxes of bluebells from my “Sainsbury Splurge” – thought I bought four, must have planted one lot somewhere. But these can do along the path, and down to the natural “cave” I found a bit further on down the slope.
I hadn’t thought of magpies – showing my bias from the old place! Never saw a magpie there, but saw all too many squirrels. I don’t know how much a metal mesh cage filled with suet bar would weight to a small animal, but it must have taken some effort to shift it – and of course, while it was doing so it’d be vulnerable itself

@ Stera – I’d been wanting to explore down the slope for ages; I had a gate, it had to lead somewhere, and the paths beyond it also had to lead somewhere? I’d been chipping away at clearing the tangles on and off for months, that day I thought, well, I want to see what’s down there, let’s go and look. Ha, fortune favours the bold! I’d not have found the feeder if I’d not gone adventuring.
I actually went up and down twice; second time to get my camera to take the pics – and to find a nettle stand when I took my gloves off to take the pics: I was unbalanced on the slope and the shock of being stung made me recoil enough to sit on the damn things! I took some revenge, so I think I can class them as ex-nettles now! I’ll go back later and make sure of the “ex-ness” of it – I wanted nettles to encourage butterflies to lay, but not overhanging the path!

@ Amy – there was just something that caught my attention and made me look closer; it may have been the regular shape. One thing’s for sure, I’m going to make it brightly coloured in future – or else nail it so severely to the post that there’s no chance of it going walkabout again.
I don’t think I’ve seen any birds of prey, well, not to know them as such – just beyond the slope and defensive planting there’s the Rea Brook, which is a nature reserve, so there’d be better hunting there, I’d think. Though, of course, bird tables do sometimes offer sitting targets.
I thought birds of prey killed first; surely the strike would be enough to break the prey’s neck, or the talons would sink in enough to kill.
Nature is very rarely kind or gentle, it can’t afford to be – but one would think that a prey animal would pose less threat to the predator if it were quickly killed. Humans are the only animals who can afford to wear rose-tinted specs!