Touchdown at the Newest Bluestocking Inn. Pudding, cups of tea, the vegetable garden coming into its own, and gerbils beautiful gerbils all furry.

[DeanElderberry]

All females welcome for intelligent discourse and non-harmful comestibles.

Great work @MyrtleLion !

I'm sorry about your dad, @PastaAllaNorma. Fingers crossed that the medics can sort it out all out ASAP.

Sending you and your dad very best wishes

I don't think there's a name for them but I also always like noticing animal paths in vegetation

Thank you 💙

Popping in to say g'night to all, especially to Pasta - I hope you have better news about your Dad tomorrow, but remember that he is where he needs to be at the moment, people are taking care of him, hopefully nice people taking the best possible care of him, and making him feel safe and comfortable

Good grief! You're more than ⅓ of the way through a new thread, and I hadn't got very far with the previous one!
Haven't read any of this one yet. And it's just past my bedtime too.

< mutters>

Ah I've made it now .... see you all in the morning!

Best wishes pasta dad🌷
Gnight all
Myrtle- fab work. Specially love the green 😍

Kitty would like to know if the gerbils could provide a tub of dried catnip, so she can recharge her mouse & banana as needed.

Trampelpfad in German, literally a path that was made by trampling down the vegetation.

That's hilarious.
A croissant and a hot chocolate, please, gerbils.

Pasta, I hope you get good news about your dad.

Hello again knittedsloth, good luck catching up! You know how it goes, somebody says 'garden water features!' or 'quilting!' and we're off, with all the deviation and repetition our 💙s desire, and suddenly we're 14 pages in😁

I never realised I had a foxes' trampelpfad in the long grass at the end of my garden, Igneo, - now every time I see it I'll think 'Igneo said that's a trampelpfad'
Would it be a fuchstrampelpfad , or am I pushing it with the made-up German words there??😏

Best wishes to Mr Pasta Senior.

You can say Fuchstrampelpfad, people will think this is a perfectly good word.

Yayyyy! I made up a German word and it is perfectly good!😃
I don't speak German but I have an idea of how words are formed, so I took a chance...
I'm looking out my window at my fuchstrampelpfad, even as we speak!
When the sun gets around there, there'll probably be an actual fuchs snoozing there, it's a popular fox sunbathing spot

I have only ever seen two alive foxes here in the wilds of West Coast Scotland but we do get the occasional red squirrel and I watched a sparrowhawk catch a pigeon in my garden.

I'm very jealous of the red squirrel!
Foxes have become very suburbanised here, they have taken runs of mature gardens as their territory, they keep their distance and are a welcome adornment.

I assume they also keep down the rat population, but shush, don't let the gerbils hear that, and certainly not Harriet the Husky Rat,she's easily spooked!

I've not a 100% certain fox sighting here for a while. I saw what might have been fox driving home in the dark a month or more ago, but it might have been a muntjac. Probably a fox, given the colour, but the speed and angle of view made it very hard to tell. I did once come across a couple of fox cubs playing around the trunk of a fallen tree. They took one look at me, with dogs behind, and scarpered.

I'm hoping we might get a few more as the rabbit population rebounds. There are quite a few clueless and innocent little bunnies around at the moment, and some very active-looking warrens. But the downside of more foxes is more delightfully fragranced crap for B&B to roll in.

I love that there is a word for it! Thank you!

I saw what might have been fox driving home in the dark a month or more ago, but it might have been a muntjac

What a clever fox, @EdithStourton, driving home!
Sorry, couldn't resist

In terms of wildlife, we're pretty rural so there's generally a plethora of farmyard and wildlife to be seen. I went for a walk the other day and the hares were racing down the hill to the other side of the field, there used to a (semi tame) peacock that roamed around here whose shriek used to give me a fright, bats, a pair of randy owls and on one memorable occasion a whole family of badgers passed in front of our car at a place we now refer to as Badger Pass. Further out but still near, there are grouse in the hills and we've occasionally seen what we assume are stoats or pine martens.

I see foxes hereabouts all the time, but they're urban foxes with little fear of people, and obviously well nourished (I assume courtesy of the Colonel)

I may have mentioned once or twice that there's a vixen lives out the back of me and by cracky it's hard to get a good night's sleep when she's in heat. Geordie girls heading out to the club are less noisy.

East Anglian foxes are amazingly talented!

As anyone who has read more than about 2 of my posts on here will have clocked, I'm fascinated by the local wildlife, and the whole pattern of the year.

A while ago I was running Batshit on some marshland grazing, and a hare got up a distance away and ran off. As we came around the field, she picked up a scent, and led me right up to what must have been the hare's form: flattened grass and weeds, sheltered by the dead stems of plants like thistles, and on a slight rise above the wetter ground.

She has an excellent nose. It's a real shame that it's not accompanied by a few more brain cells.

dd can some nights hear a badger in the gardens behind the Edi tenement where she lives, she is on the 4th floor so she hasn't seen it yet.
We live close to the shore and there is a tidal seaweed covered rock which has seals on it at low tide and we see otters quite often. We also see osprey quite often. A pine marten crossed the road in front of my car close to work a few years back but that was the only time I've seen it.

Many years ago, when I lived on a cul-de-sac between two allotments, I used to see foxes wandering back and forth on the street on the very early hours. One morning, I found a dead fox in my front garden. I often wonder if it had been hit by a car and crawled into my quiet garden to die (very sad) or if it was just old and it was its time to go.

My next house was on the corner of two busy roads, but during Covid lockdowns, all the foxes would come out at night and use the streets as their playground and highways.

Igneo, am very envious of your ospreys!