Wildlife locally on the allotments!

As we are in a fairly rural location here (on the very edge of Manchester and Cheshire, with the Cheshire border only 1/2 mile from our house, and with a 5 mile journey from Partington - down country lanes - to any form of metropolitan civilization), we are fortunate to have a lot of wildlife locally, so as I drove onto the allotment site today (after work to meet up with Lee for some weeding, hoeing and watering) and was met with the sight of this fine fellow, I thought perhaps it was time to do a blog entry showing some of the wildlife I've managed to capture with my trusty camera on the plot!

Quite often as you round the corner at the bottom of the site on the road that runs round the site you will catch sight of the local rabbits, usually youngsters, but as you drive up towards them, then they usually run off and leave the site! This one today allowed me to get close enough to take this piccy with my 300mm telephoto zoom lens before it decided to run around the corner, as I followed I got closer, and when it stopped in a bed (in a plot at the top), I managed to get the following picture!

They are beautiful creatures, but they can cause havoc with our crops, so generally we do try and discourage them (although they do taste nice in the pot - if you can get one)! They do face a lot of problems locally, there is a pair of buzzards living within 1/2 mile of the allotments, plus a fox that regularly visits the plot (we've not seen him, but his runs are visible, and a couple of other plotholders have seen him, a young male) and these do seem to be doing well with keeping the rabbit numbers under control!

This little fellow is one of a family of squirrels that live in the woods surrounding the allotment site, they can be a bit of a problem, eating sweetcorn, burying acorns (that sprout in the middle of our beds!) and pinching strawberries (Lee watched one last week sit and eat one on Pat and Colins Plot), but generally they dont cause too many big problems for us! Mind you, HFW does say they go well on a BBQ! Lol!

Other mammals we have also seen Hedgehogs (there were 5 hibernating in one plots compost heap one year, as you can see in this piccy), fieldmice and I'm sure the other day I saw a Shrew!

We also have a colony of Pipistrel Bats living nearby (in a cave off the side of the Manchester Ship Canal that runs just to the north of Partington), which we often see in an evening, flying round the houses!

The local birdlife is also proliffic, a pair of Blackbirds nested in the alcove of our shed earlier this year.

They hatched 5 chicks........

....... who all fledged succesfully! The nest is still in the shed alcove, though is no longer being used!

Other birds we are aware of living on the plot, wood pidgeons, magpies, robins, blue tits and great tits, sparrows, jays, peregrines, buzzards, blackbirds, ravens, crows, barn owls, and a heron who lives locally too! There are also seasonal visitors such as the swifts, goldcrests and others besides! I need to spend some more time with my telephoto lens on the plot to catch some piccies of some of these feathered visitors, but that will come with time!

We also have both frogs and toads on the site, both of which use our pond for spawning, and are regularly seen around the plot!

All you have to do is turn over something and out jumps a toad!

Or look into the undergrowth, and there lurks a frog!

Last year we also saw a small lizard at the site cabin, no idea what species, but if I see it again I'll be sure to get a picture!

There's also lots of insect life around, especially if you take the time to have a look, this orb spider was busy making its web when we noticed it!

Hover fly, there's lots of polintating insects on the plots, as well as our honey bees!

Plenty of butterflies too, I believe this one is a Monarch, which is quite far north for the breed, though one or two types (cabbage whites in particular) we could do without!

There's plenty of other fauna on the plots too, though one type we could definitely bear to see less of is the common garden slugs and snails!

Locally we've also got plenty of fields, the Dunham Massey NT Hall and plenty of nature in all its guises, sometime in the future I may get round to taking some piccies locally and do a future blog on it!

Anyhows, I hope you like the piccies and get more of a feel for the beauty of the natural world we have around us hereabouts!