Hello everyone. We (that is, my partner, my son and I) have just moved in the last month to a house with the most incredible garden, and I just needed to tell someone! We've never had a garden. Now we have one that is so overgrown, we can't reach the edges yet. The week we moved in, my partner met a
Badger in the garden, so I spent the next week or so hanging out of the upstairs windows all night trying to acquire night-vision! One evening I walked into the kitchen without switching the light on, and glanced out of the window, and there was a
Badger, wandering around eating peanuts that I'd put out for the birds. We went and sat in the dining room in the dark, and watched all evening as the house was surrounded by
Badgers and foxes. We are not in the country, just on the edge of a town, backing onto a chalk downland nature reserve, so I can't believe my luck! Now we time our (candle-lit) evening meals for badgerwatching, and often see young foxes playing in the afternoon sun. We think the
Badgers have a sett under the summerhouse, and another under the shed, as there are big holes dug out, and they have loo areas at several points around the front and back gardens. The garden is also full of birds, mainly dunnocks, blue and great tits, collared doves, jays and green and greater spotted woodpeckers, and today a female sparrow hawk swooped and caught a collared dove outside my partner's office window, and proceded to kill and eat it on the patio in front of us, which was exciting and horrifying both at once, but I've never been that close to a sparrow hawk. We are still completely over-awed by the beauty of the place. Hopefully, I will be able to bring any questions to this forum, for help and advise, and keep you updated as we discover more about the garden. We can see a distant orchard, but can't reach it yet for the undergrowth, which we don't want to hack around too much for fear of disturbing the wildlife!