Wednesday 13 April 2011

Not exactly a bowling green

Our front lawn, such as it was, now looks like a scale model of a battlefield after an artillery bombardment. Meandering trails of tufts of moss and grass are punctuated by shallow shell-craters. This happened last night or early this morning – a quick surgical strike without collateral damage.

There’s a long long trail a-winding….
Speculation – what caused it? Sangliers (wild boar) or deer would have caused considerably more damage. Besides, any animal of any size approaching on foot would have to come in via the bridge or the field across more grass, so why there, surrounded by fences and walls? Voles are too small to achieve such destruction in such a short time. We suspect either green woodpeckers or jays, after leatherjackets and other grubs.

Well it wasn’t exactly a bowling green anyway
The mass of feathers under the spruce is the result of another type of monster altogether - we have had woodpigeons nesting there, and the sparrowhawk (probably) got one. We found the corpse of an unfortunate squab, too, and no doubt the rest will die too. Forgive me if I don't grieve over the loss of a woodpigeon or two, after what they do to our brassicas and soft fruit.

3 comments:

Jean said...

We gave up on trying to keep our UK lawn nice - having a female dog ruins it and unless you are prepared to follow her around with a hosepipe you have no chance.
The lawn at Le Grand-Pressigny is kept beautifully by Alex and Nicole who lavish oodles of TLC on in inbetween Lulu's visits !!

I know what you mean about pigeons - they are a menace. We also have visiting pheasants that were lined up peering at the contents of our greenhouse the other day.

I really fancy pigeon and pheasant pie some time !!

Pollygarter said...

Jean: I know what you mean about female dogs! By the way, it doesn't look like mole damage either ( a whole other problem)

Niall & Antoinette said...

wood pigeons shouldn't be in trees; they are best served roasted with crispy bacon :-)!
Antoinette