Nature Watch

What a pain in the arse wasps are, especially if you are unfortunate enough to get stung by one there, and yes I know it's November but we still have shed loads of the little blighters. So far I have been stung 9 times this year, they are everywhere.
I have found a number of nests, this one behind the garden thermometer hanging on the wall.
No more wasps in this one after I sprayed them, tell your friends buzzies, I'll be back.

And what about this little beauty for all you arachnophobes;




............found this one just as I was about to remove a few dead plants, think I leave it for a while.

The kittens are no longer kittens and we have managed to catch one of them last week ("Kibbles" named by granddaughter Alice) and took her to the vets to be spayed (the kitten not Alice), she was OK and strangely still wanted attention and a stroke when we returned so she must have forgiven us. She was the easy one, catching the other 3 will be a different matter, their Mum certainly wasn't impressed, she gave us a real throaty rumble.
Meanwhile "Shadow" kitten, so christened because he was never more than 12 inches behind his Mum when we first saw him, has grown up and is already catching rats, I saw him playing with one last week and went to fetch the camera, when I returned he was gone, so was the rat. Shadow is on the right having just been woken up by someone with a camera, along with Buttons (button nose) on the left and Kibbles. The only one missing is Stig named by Morgan, he was probably snoozing in a quieter place.

And this is "Monty" the mongoose, he calls late afternoon and if I am in the garden, he takes one look at me, ignores me and carries on, on his hunt to keep the snakes down to a minimum.
I have only seen 2 snakes in the garden while we have been here, one was about 18 inches and the other was over a metre, they could have been the same one for all I know and had just grown up. Perhaps I should set a trap and tag them, then again perhaps not.


Finally, we have the Partridge family, I think the big one is David, (think about it, if you are younger than 25 years old you may have to do some research) taking the rest of the family for a walk. They ground feed and just walk across the land most days, exactly like the picture although I had to borrow this one from Google.