Who or what is leaving this food in our gardens?

[GreeboIsMySpiritAnimal]

Live in the middle of a row of terraces - houses on either side and overlooked by another row at the back. For a few weeks now, we and the neighbours on one side have been waking up to food in our back gardens. Usually, slices of bread scattered around - sometimes quite a lot. Once we had a cooked sausage right in front of our patio doors, once an entire bag of food waste, and yesterday, half a supermarket roast beef sandwich.

I'd assume an animal except none of the food has ever been so much as nibbled on! We have a cat but he's a fussy bugger with no interest in human food. The neighbours on either side of us have lived here for years and are lovely, so highly doubt its them. Suppose it could be someone throwing it over from the house/s behind - but it'd be a hell of a throw, especially in the case of the sausage!

I'm guessing a fox but why would they bring food into our gardens and not eat it? It's been going on since before C-19 started so not related to that. I am so intrigued!

Easter bunny got confused?

We kept finding whole chicken eggs in our garden...think it was foxes.

But also once we were sitting in the garden and an entire loaf of bread fell from the sky!!!! It was a seagull.

Now, I grew up on the North Sea coast and could well believe it of the big buggers we get up there. But we're inland now and don't really get gulls. I've seen red kites overhead, but surely if it was being dropped by birds it'd effect more than two gardens? We've asked the street WhatsApp group and it does seem to be just us!

I occasionally find the occasional crust of bread in my garden that I didn't put there and assume a greedy bird was flying off with it from another garden and accidentally dropped it. Either that or foxes.

Seagulls or crows are greedy buggers and take more than they can carry. A seagull once dropped a prawn cracker which the dog thought came from heaven

A few weeks ago I opened the patio doors at night, and disturbed a fox trying to stash some kind of meat bone in a container of pansies. I had not known that they bury food, nor that they would move food around different locations - I'm on a close nowhere near food outlets, and we all have wheelie bins, so can't imagine where he got it. So, I would guess foxes have been leaving stuff on their travels.

I didn't know foxes moved food about either.

Do you get on with your neighbours?

Have your bin collections been suspended?

Bin collections all going ahead, and no problems with the neighbours as far as I'm aware!

One of my cats used to drag alsorts around to our garden. He liked to leave crusts to attract birds. He got a whole raw chicken from somewhere and a dead Guinea pig. He was old ,slow and docile so I don't know why . He didn't nibble it at all, so maybe it is your cat trying to set traps.

We had some random items left in our garden by foxes, they do move them about. I once watched one dragging an old doormat or something along the middle of the road.

Would expect food to be eaten though, rather than dumped, ours certainly don't leave anything, but if there is anything edible they will just eat it. They are a bit thin though and grateful for what they find, which isn't much as we tend to eat it ourselves.

In our house, it's badgers.

They were quite clean with it though. They would open the council supplied food waste bin and take out the entire bag of food and disappear with it. Maybe the mess ended up in someone else's garden, like yours.

My husband thought it was foxes and I thought it was badgers.

We bought a lockable food waste bin and the first night they attempted to drag the whole bin under our gate and out of the garden.
They made an awful racket, so we went to see what they were. They were a family of 3 badgers. We now have to put the food waste bin in the general bin between collections to stop the critters.

@MrsT1405, I would love to believe our apparently very stupid cat is a secret feline genius, setting traps for the birds!

So, I've noticed a large magpie hanging around our garden, chittering away and annoying the cat. Could he be the culprit?