I was just filling the dishwasher when something caught my eye outside I looked up and there was a green woodpecker near our little apple tree with two pigeons in the background. I was a little distracted by the activity to the left of the trampoline and was torn between watching the green woodpecker and the grey squirrel which was chasing a crow, frantically running across the grass and the crow flew up.
The squirrel was acting rather oddly. I’ve seen this kind of activity before. It was flipping around with its tail up against the boards on the play area, being very playful and frenzied! It then saw another bird and chased after that. I think it was a pigeon and I lost sight of it for a moment. It was then seen sitting by the ramp on the summerhouse looking around very meerkat like!
I looked at the green woodpecker which moved towards the willow and I wondered if the squirrel would chase the green woodpecker. Would it take on this bird?
Yes it did!
The squirrel suddenly caught sight of the green woodpecker which I had been watching. The squirrel suddenly with a great spurt of speed, ran down the garden towards the house flicking its tail. Whereupon the green woodpecker took off before being caught! Flying quite low over the neighbours garden’s to the large oak boarding those same gardens.
About two minutes later I was doing the washing up. Not that it matters to the tale but they were the bits I couldn’t put in the dishwasher! I noticed three black birds on the boards around the edge of the wildlife area.
There were two males and a female the female flew off and the male looked like it was just about to go into some kind of dance. The dance which I’ve seen them do before. He suddenly realised that the female had flown off and he went after her.
At that moment, out of nowhere, a white streak came out from the fence at the back of the shed! It was a cat moving so fast trying to get at the blackbirds. The cat unawares to me must have been watching them from the fence line at the bottom of our garden. It didn’t manage to catch anything and was looking at the other birds longingly, further down the hedge line.
The size increase of the next animal startled me. At that point a bulky fox jumped right over behind the cat. At which the cat saw hunched down. The fox unperturbed by the cat looked down its nose at said cat and had a sniff around.
On a previous post you were introduced to Hoppy. Hoppy visits our garden normally but this fox was fuller in size. Hoppy has black markings around the face especially near the eyes, making her look sad or tired. This one was plain faced.
I think it was a dog fox. He stayed for a few minutes, walking around sniffing the lay of the land whilst the cat watched warily. Eventually moving off behind the buddleia and disappearing out of sight.