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Unexpected visitors are usually a delightful surprise. We have had several this Autumn.
The first was a grey squirrel. I was amused to see her/him trying to work out how to get at the peanuts in the wire container, until I saw him/her chew off half of the plastic base.
I ran out of the kitchen door, waving my arms. Fortunately the squirrel has not returned to the feeder but we have seen her a few times, digging a small hole in the lawn to hide a hazel nut or two. It is usually only in the Autumn we see squirrels in our garden and most often they are hiding nuts in the lawn.
The poet William H.Davies, who lived from 1871 to 1940, mentions the habit in his lovely poem,
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare….
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.”
The squirrels he saw would probably have been red squirrels. The red ones were last seen in Devon in the 1950s; that was when Roger Hosking filmed some at Newton Ferrers, just before Devon became grey squirrel only.
Another visitor to the bird feeders has been a jay.
In Autumn jays gather acorns to eat and to store. Most years we see one dibbing his beak in the lawn to bury some acorns.
In the Spring we often see oak seedlings sprouting up in the lawn – probably a result of the jay’s game of hide and seek.
This year, our good neighbours Neil and Mary Fisher, and ourselves have a jay coming to our feeders; the fat balls seem the favourite food. It is very nervous. Just a slight movement from either of us on our side of the kitchen window and it is off.
So the photo I have enclosed is the best I have managed (perhaps the Editor will reject it and find a better one!)
Roger Hosking has lots of good photos of a jay. Many years ago he found a fledgling in a lane. He took it home and, with Sally, Rebecca – yes the same Rebecca that will be writing the nature diary here in a few weeks time! – they fed it and watched its feathers grow until it could fly.
It remained around their house and garden for months. It had a passion for hiding anything blue, in secret places, like under cushions.
They called it J.R., after a character in a TV soap-opera. When I phoned Roger and Sally, yesterday, Sally said that they have two jays coming to their feeder; I wonder if they are JR’s grandchildren?
Have you seen a jay at your bird-feeders?
Our latest, unexpected visitor has been a kestrel. It is a male, because he has a rusty-brown back and a grey head and tail.
We see it flying over the fields on slender, pointed wings and swooping up to perch on the very tops of the Monterey pine trees, that our children planted nearly fifty years ago.
He sits there, long tail drooping, watching for any movement of mouse or vole far below. In some of his animal stories, Henry Williamson called the kestrel, Mousing Kee-kee – after its call and its prey.
We have even been woken in the middle of the night by visitors to our little woodland. A tawny owl has been hooting for a mate.
The tremulous, “Tu-woooo- whooo-oo,” has broken into our dreams almost every night this month.
So far we have not heard the answering, “Tu-whit!” cry of a mate but we hope she will soon hear his amorous song and they will nest again in the hollow ash tree at the bottom of the garden.
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