Its happened again!!

Wow, Steragram, your garden seems to be a magnet for wildlife...
Yes. Looks like in future you'll have to put some type of cover over your bulbs ... good luck ! :o)

Oh how annoying! Wildlife maybe lovely to see in your garden, but the damage they can do is infuriating. I lost just one of a pair of tubs planted up for the spring and placed either side of the steps up to the house. I thought it was a local dog which roams free, but the footprints told another story - wild boar. They act like rotovators and root up everything, especially bulbs. We were just so lucky they didn't make it up the steps to the lawn........

That is such a shame. So frustrating -and after you admiring the fox as well. Hope you can find a way to secure the pots next time. Netting or wire sounds like a good idea.

Thank you Gattina - you have reminded me to count my blessings!
Yes TT, its the penalty for living in a rural area. On the plus side we get woodpeckers and a nuthatch and sometimes goldfinch and once a jay. I've heard little, tawny and barn owls too.
Thanks for the sympathy Ojibway - I knew I could count on Goy for some fellow feeling!

That's a shame,Sue,I didn't know foxes did that..it must have been desperate for food,I'm sure...Can you rescue any of your scattered bulbs at all,and replant them ? Sounds like it was after the tulips,doesn't it ? I have often wondered how they survive at this time..as ours has a regular route around some of our gardens..maybe I should protect my tulips in pots...

I didn't realise foxes did that. It must be annoying for you to have it happen again this year. Good idea to protect them with wire mesh next time.
Would the fox have eaten the tulips I wonder ? I thought they were poisonous.

Good morning,Hywel ! ..glad I am not alone now :o))

Good idea putting the wire on your pots next time.

I didn't know they did it either, but I do now, and so do you all! Yes I was able to replant some of the daffodils but I guess the roots would have been damaged. Daffodil bulbs are poisonous to us but its amazing what foxes will eat. But I think he only ate the tulips( the badger certainly did last time and they were all in full bloom too). Also the fox dug up a large lily from a flower bed but didn't eat it so I put it back. The badger had my only lily a couple of years ago.Its amazing that they know where they are even when well buried. They must have an amazing sense of smell. Chilli powder works well but with all this rain it has to be renewed pretty often. Perhaps its best to stick to euonymus!

Have you got any old, dry holly leaves you could spread around the area? Foxy noses (like anyone's, really) are very sensitive. I'm sure it would deter them.

I knew squirrels did it and this year I was one step ahead and have potted my tulips up as usual but have covered the pots with various lids! Really didnt know that foxes did this eithe,r tulips must hold a secret ingredient!

I should be able to scrape up some holly leaves - a good idea if they don't all blow off again as its very windy here.
In fact I could cut some sprigs off and stick them in the compost - well worth a try , thanks!

It looks a little untidy for a while, but if it saves the bulbs, it will be worth it. Let's hope it works!

I used to do a similar thing with rose cuttings,Sue,to keep all the cats off the soil,at our last house..so it should work.. ..

Shee, that puts my squirrel problem into perspective! Nature is lovely, but sometimes it improves with a little distance...

Such a shame that lovely animals like foxes can do so much damage to our gardens. Other than Sparrows ripping out lengths of hairlike fibres from my hanging baskets wild life never gives me any problems on my balcony. We are at ground level but when we moved in I put up some chicken wire so that none of our 5 small dogs could get out into the street. Though if a fox really wanted to get in it would have no problem because the wire is all pushed out at the bottom from years of pushing my 3 white flower toughs out to make room on the balcony!

I've seen foxes on 2 occasions at least near where we live while on my way home from work, when I used to finish the evening shift at midnight.

Well its coming to the point where you are quite lucky to have sparrows! They are much scarcer than they used to be - we only have a couple here when once it would have been 10 times that. I saw a fox in a lane this afternoon, well away form any gardens - it had the darkest tail I've ever seen on a fox, real mahogany colour. I did not tell it how to access your balcony!

I can't remember the last time I saw a sparrow - :-((

They were all at my house this summer.,Gattina...and a family of 10 queuing up at the feeders ! you have just made me realise,I haven't seen the around for a while..:o(

Have you got all the starlings, too?

No,I haven't seen Starlings for a long time around here..I used to love seeing them collect in their hundreds ,when we lived in Cumbria,on the coast..such a sight when they all flew off together :o)

I've not seen sparrows for years - once they were the most common garden bird, now that's "air-rats".

I checked "house sparrow" on Google; they're on an endangered species list, numbers have declined by 60% over last 30-odd years, so anything anyone can do to encourage them is to be, well, encouraged!

http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/housesparrow.htm

hmm, apparently they're a pest in USA. rather than shoot them, they could captue them and send them back home. we'll do a trade: give us back our sparrows and you can take back your grey squirrels!

We have the starlings. A couple of miles away there is the second biggest roost in the country and at dusk they fly over in their thousands - a really wonderful sight.

Just seen your post Fran - what a good idea. I used to love the little red squirrels. I remember the first one I ever saw as a child - it was nibbling a piece of mushroom growing on a tree trunk, with its tail curled over just like in the picture books.I was entranced.

We don't get grey squirrels here, we get a very dark, almost black version of the red squirrel - they're terribly shy, it's a red letter day when we see one. We have hazel bushes in our garden - if the squirrels would come, I'd gladly sacrifice the nuts. I remember reading "Squirrel Nutkin" to Daughter when she was tiny, and getting quite emotional about it.

Ahhh!

I've never seen a red squirrel in real life - except for the Isle of Wight, southern England is all grey, though I did hear something about them trying to reintroduce reds somewhere.
But people would keep introducing foreign species to new habitats that didn't have the natural checks and balances of the homeland - grey squirrels to UK, sparrows to US, rabbits to Australia, Japanese Knotweed everywhere - "just a few, they can't do any harm". Ha.

I Googled "red squirrel recovery" and got a lot of hits, mostly PDFs though I did find
http://www.squirrelweb.co.uk/2003/09/01/species-recovery-project-red-squirrels-in-thetford-forest-completed-2003/

Hi, When we lived in the real country in Warwickshire we used to get a Fox or Foxes coming in and digging up our Bulbs (Badgers too) but we found that they generally didn't eat them they were rooting in the soft soil or Compost for Worms etc, easy picking in softer Soil.

They didn't eat the daffs but they did eat the tulips. But chilli pepper on the compost does put them off!

sigh, I bought two packs of sliced chili toput on my pots - about time I did it, as they're not going to do any good standing on a kitchen shelf!

Never mind, what would really have annoyed you would be if the pots had been dug up in the meantime. I haven't tried sliced chilli - the pepper you can buy in large bags from Asian shops & it works out a lot cheaper. But it needs reapplying after its rained a few times.

nods, I'm at the Bengali end of Bethnal Green Road, corner of Brick Lane [ake "Banglatown"], and plenty of shops - but looking for a wholesaler, as I want to buy more than a couple of packs - I want to blitz the whole garden.

Or, better, hang the cbili up around the fence, hopefully to keep them out of the entire garden rather than just off the pots. I've got plenty of old net curtain, was going to cut them into squares and make "teabags" to keep the chili together.

I wonder if a cat deterrent might work on other creatures, too? If you dab some eucalyptus oil or camphor on teabags and leave them scattered around your garden between plants, or spread old-fashioned mothballs, cats won't come anywhere near. I suppose it might work for foxes, too. Worth a try?

hadn't thought of cat deterrent, thanks, Gattina, will check it out.

I did buy a pack of mothballs, put them in cupboard under sink "for now" - that was months ago, sigh.

Someone said that birds eat them, not knowing they're not good for that - i was thinking of crushing them and "bagging" the pieces to make them un-get-at-able, but still leave plenty of space for the aroma to waft around.

I'll have to do an experiment; mothballs one part of garden, chili annother, and see which works best, if either do at all.

Lavender oil was another suggestion: shee, I'll have to have about six different experimental zones!

Could be a very strangely perfumed garden, Fran! Let us know if anything works.

lol a "perfumed garden" indeed!!!

If I ever get round to it, I'll try to rememebr to keep noews and report back

Gattina I will pass on your tip on keeping cats off to my friend in Staffordshire whose hates cats but has neighbours who love them. She can't use an ultrasonic thingy because it would reach beyond her patch and everything else needs reapplying after rain & she isn't as mobile as she used to be.
Fran, have fun in your perfumed garden! I don't think putting the chilli in bags hung round the fence would deter them - I thought they were put off when they actually tasted the chilli - never noticed that it smells, bu then foxes have more sensitive noses than we do. The bag I bought from the Asian shop was quite big and I think one or two would easily do your garden from what I remember.
But if you put it everywhere would it affect the blackbirds and robins etc digging for grubs perhaps? I might just put it round things you want to protect.

thanks, Steragram: I might just put it round a few and see if there's any noticeable difference between them and the rest.

Luckily no one round here seems to have cats - I did see one in the garden a couple of times when I first moved in, but that was over a year ago and not seen it since, so that's lucky.

*s* a fox with a bad cold has a better sense of smell than humans!

Fran and Steragram, I have to warn you, I haven't tried this cat-repellent method myself - I certainly don't want to keep cats from my garden, but I have heard something of the sort on more than one occasion. Worth a try, I think, regardless.

It would be interesting for me as well as down on the allotment there is at the very least one cat that does the rounds constantly & has used my seedbeds as a toilet on occasions.

I shout at it or throw something close by to frighten it away. I don't want to hurt the animal, just keep it away from my seedbeds!

lol Balcony, I'll try the other remedies and report back, if you or someone will try the anti-cat?

Sorry I can't as I love my moggy but I would love to know if it works. If I need to protect a seed bed a bramble or two usually does the trick. Oops Fran, just noticed that it was crushed mothballs you were going to put in bags, not chilli. That could probably be a lot more effective!
Balcony, you could try sprigs of holly stuck in your seed bed?

I saw the cat today as I was opening the lock on the gate into the allotment field. It's white with some irregular black patches. It ignored me totally & once I reached our allotments I didn't see it any more. Perhaps it did see me & decided to keep well away! Perhaps my frightening techniques have been successful! (Anybody believe that?)

Probably, they aren't stupid - doesn't mean it won't sneak back when you've gone though. Try the briars on the seed beds.

cats are supposed to be psychic, that's why they were the favourite "witches' familiars". Maybe it read your aura, Balcony!

Just how scary ARE you, Balcony? I can't believe you are anything more than a bit of a pussycat yourself.
Fran, I can believe that cats are psychic - our lot certainly "know" a split second before I decide to go to the fridge, and are there before me. It's quite spooky!

lol Gattina, they get there just in time to get in your way and trip you up??

Most animals seem to have senses that we don't, or at least that we don't to any practical degree - you've only to check out reports of animals leaving the area before earthquakes hit, or acting out of character if they can't leave.

My parent's dog used to know that dad was coming home about five minutes before he opened the door; he'd be sitting at the door, ears pricked and eyes fixed on the door - that's how we'd know to put the kettle on ready for when dad actually did arrive.

It's weird, Fran. In the evening, we will often have a row of cats in their usual perch along the back of the sofa, all fast asleep, and all at once, and in perfect unison, they will wake up and look up at the ceiling, following some noise that we can't hear at all as it moves across the bedroom floor. I've been up to see what they are listening to, and there's NOTHING up there. It's quite disturbing. They'll all go back to sleep at the same moment, too, while we are left bewildered and a bit worried.
Yes, they do trip us up, quite often. I think they hope we'll drop a plateful of something tasty.
"Jog on, Kitties:"

Gattina, could you post a pic of the cats asleep on the back of the sofa? Creepy about the presence in the bedroom!

Well, I'll try tomorrow, Steragram, because we're about to put them out for the evening.
I'll bet the "something" in the bedroom is nothing more than a little creepy-crawlie scuttling across the floorboards. I have difficulty hearing the kettle whistle, so not so surprising, really.

I remember a report from years ago, Gattina: I don't know how truthful the original report was, of course!

There was a room full of caged small animals (experimental animals in a research centre, I seem to remember). This person was in the next room, getting their food ready, and all of a sudden all the animal noises stopped as if switched off. He went into the room to investigate and saw that all the animals were watching "something" cross the room - and the animals on both sides of the central aisle were all looking in the same place, so whatever they were lookng at wss in the room, between the stacks of cages. Their gazes tracked it to the far wall, and then all the animal noises came back as if switched back on again.

He said it wasn't the most comfortable experience he'd ever had.

Of course, I don't know how factual or otherwise the original report was - *s* I tried to Google "animals watch invisible object cross room", with about the level of success you'd expect!

I believe that PLANTS in experimental laboratories react quite markedly when one of their number is damaged in any way - the micro-electrical impulse equivalent of "screaming" the article said. This was reported many years ago in the magazine New Scientist rather than News of the World, so I am inclined to believe it.
I am also inclined to believe almost ANYTHING about the behaviour of cats and dogs. When we were going through the process of rounding up as many of the local feral cats as would catch, and driving them about 40 miles to the nearest animal refuge to get them all sterilised, it was a long, dangerous difficult task for us, but a dreadfully traumatic and frightening experience for them, and not one we could help them cope with. However, those that had been "done", settled into a pattern of staying near the house, and becoming almost domesticated and approachable. We one day noticed that, bringing the latest little "victim" back from the surgery, an entire semi-circle of cats waiting patiently in the courtyard. A sort of welcoming and reassurance committee, who crowded around the wailing, wobbly, bewildered "newie", licking her/him and making soft little noises, purring and rubbing until she/he calmed down. This ritual was repeated on many subsequent occasions with others, and rather charmed us. What we want to know is HOW on earth did they know when we would arrive, and that we'd have an upset cat in the car with us? Explain that one!

Pass on that! Animals, and plants too, have ways of communiating that we don't even begin to understand - and up to a few years ago, didn't even believe existed - arrogant humans, "if we can't do it, it can't be done".

There are numerous stories of animals caring for and feeing others of different species - cats aren't renowned for altruism, but maybe that's down to the prejudice of the observer!

even plants can communicate: another report, can't remember where I read it: certain tree, when it's attacked, puts out extra tannin as a chemical deterrent. Other trees nearby, not yet attacked, also started putting out extra tannin. How did they know?

Dunno! It's a Mystery!

grins, that was by way of being a rhetorical question

Its all a mystery but one thing's clear - Gattina wins the Saving Cats award!

Aah! Thank you, Steragram! Too Kind - I want to dedicate this award to my darling, scratch-covered, ever-loving and patient OH. And I love you all! Mwah! Mwah!

I'm sure you will share it between you. Prrup!
:)