Happily Ever After
Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running
Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.
Voles May Safely Graze
by admin - 15:12 on 07 August 2012
One group that won't miss our much-mourned cat are the rodents who live in The Rural Retreat's garden. Maybe I'm looking harder, or maybe they've become bolder, but there's no doubt that recently I've seen many more voles in action.
The most reliable place to spot them is beneath the bird feeder, close to That Bloody Window, where spilled seed is easy pickings for small mammals, even if they do run the risk of being trampled by chaffinches. A few days ago I saw three foraging at the same time.
A yet-to-be-dismantled Seed Volcano beneath the apple tree is another popular feeding place, if the number of vole holes is anything to go by. Or is something bigger there? One hole is sizeable and today I glimpsed a brown blur dash from behind the apple tree to behind The Nutella Stump – far too small for a marten, probably too big for a vole.
My plan, when the rain stops, is to get outside and put the Pentax at ground level, closer to the most active vole hole, and see what can be snapped. Who needs to travel to the woods to find wildlife?
Books Update: Beauly Gallery is the latest stockist of A Cat Called Tess. It very decently also added The Bumper Book of Black Isle Snappery to its shelves and took a selection of my cards to sell too. And its boss requested that I produce a range of Tess cards for the gallery. A good morning's work.
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