I share my garden with a variety of wild animals including every species of little bird typical of the Irish countryside:blue tits, bullfinches, tomtits, robins, thrushes, blackbirds, various kinds of pigeons, woodpeckers, wrens and many more.
I recently discovered an intrepid hedgehog was helping himself to the food I left out for some of the cats who wander in from time to time. Besides them there are also foxes, possibly badgers, multitudes of different looking bees, differently coloured butterflies, and a gang of frogs – one of whom I recently rescued from the claws of the snow white cat that visits most. He recently brought me a dead rat, very thoughtful.
We also have a troop of little bats who come out around sunset and whirl round and round the garden catching insects I suppose.
Nothing is as lovely as listening to the chorus of all the little birds with their distinct voices. It sounds different at different times of the day.
However among all the little critters the squirrels are perhaps the most exciting to spot.
Unfortunately this morning one of them, let’s call him Francis, was found lying on the grass conscious but unable to move his back legs. We took him to the nearest vet that treats wildlife so here’s hoping he gets better and can return home to the trees he lives in here in the garden we share.
Francis is a gray squirrel, and although he and his kin have a controversial reputation given the plight of our native Irish red squirrels, pine martens are a natural predator of grays.
Letting gardens grow a bit wild, or re-wilding as it’s called in gardening circles, is supposed to encourage teams of little creatures to take up residence.
I recently watched The Wild Gardner on RTÉ, a show about Colin Stafford-Johnson,
who is attempting to turn an unused patch of land in the Wicklow countryside into an oasis for plants and animals.
Manicured gardens are certainly lovely, but there is an intrinsic charm about a garden that’s, to a degree, left to nature. They team with life from the dozens of birds calling and answering each other, to the bees busily pillaging every blossom they can find.
After all as Stafford-Johnson’s mother rightly says: “Nature isn’t neat”.