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  • Registered Users Posts: 18,069 ✭✭✭✭fryup


    lately i've been hearing noises in the wee hours 4am - 5am of something running across either my attic or my roof.....what would it be?.. a rat? a pine marten? something else?

    (rural bungalow)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Stigura wrote: »
    Common Toad (Bufo bufo). I keep his crickets in a little cricket keeping tank. It comes with two plastic pipes which slot in. The crickets crawl into these pipes, to do what ever they do in there.

    I then pull a pipe out and tap it, above my toads tank. Crickets get dislodged and it's game on!

    Just decided to feed Toad some more. Opened the lid of his tank. Got the tube. Started tapping it with my finger. And, at that quiet, tapping sound; Toad very deliberately looked up and focused on the end of the tube!

    Now, to put this into context? Toad's figured out, in about a week, that my tapping the tube equates with food appearing. I haven't used this method in a year! He's just sussed it.

    How cool is that? A bloody Toad demonstrably learning as fast as many Dogs!

    Toads rock! :D

    We had a goldfish that came for food once you popped the food container. Took him about a week too. Captive pets have little other experiences to relate to.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    fryup wrote: »
    lately i've been hearing noises in the wee hours 4am - 5am of something running across either my attic or my roof.....what would it be?.. a rat? a pine marten? something else?

    (rural bungalow)

    Could be either. Though, these days? I'd tend to suspecting pine marten. Roughly dependent on ye location.

    Have ye any access to the attic? Either would be pretty obvious by their droppings.

    Maybe ye should take a look at the box I just built and put up! ;)


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    We had a goldfish that came for food once you popped the food container. Took him about a week too. Captive pets have little other experiences to relate to.




    I wonder what that says to the much stated claim that a goldfish has about as much acuity as a Peta supporter?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Stigura wrote: »
    I wonder what that says to the much stated claim that a goldfish has about as much acuity as a Peta supporter?

    A fish has as much keenness of perception as most other animals. If you mean the old adage of "the memory of a goldfish" , that myth has long being busted.

    As for PETA, I'm no fan but I wouldn't disparage them either.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    LMAO! I've left my trap up, today. Letting the birds get a free feed, undisturbed. And, of course, the rats want their share. It's only natural.

    But, today, for the first time I'm seeing these Tiny little things! Baby rats! One of them's no bigger than the chaffinches that are flocking out there! Cute AF! :D

    Christ, if Pat saw these? He'd burst a blood vessel! :pac:

    I wish I had a camera, up to the job.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    :eek: Wow! Lovely little point of observation. As the internal temps, in here, have crept down ~ 72F to 70F. Now 'dropped' to 67.6; So my toad (B.bufo) has had a Great hunting / feeding session.

    Now, he's left his customary rock. (This is a a 'pet' toad, remember. He's always sat out on his rock. Watching his tank, from that vantage point)

    Couple of days ago, having been busy with most of a tub of medium crickets, over a week or three? He's vanished into his cave.

    Better yet? I've just realised how I have been putting my woolly hat on, this last couple of days :D

    Nature Rocks!


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,764 ✭✭✭Bsal


    Every September for the last few years I get a Chiffchaff passing through the garden for a week or so, have been on the lookout for it and today two show up :) In other news looks like the Swallows are leaving my area seeing less and less the past couple of days.


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,634 ✭✭✭✭Graces7


    fryup wrote: »
    lately i've been hearing noises in the wee hours 4am - 5am of something running across either my attic or my roof.....what would it be?.. a rat? a pine marten? something else?

    (rural bungalow)

    Here it is my cats who do that. Almost every night..


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    After a lean year for butterflies they appeared in numbers today. The garden had Speckled Wood, Small Tortoiseshell, Red Admiral, Peacock, Common Blue, and Painted Lady this afternoon.


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,009 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    spotted a few speckled wood and red admirals in the garden today, plus the largest garden spider i think i've yet seen; my hand was only a couple of inches behind it so it gives a reasonably accurate measure of scale.

    490117.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Very calm today and it seems to have brought a good variety of Damsel and Dragon Flies to the garden.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,009 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    started to dig the front garden pond today. we have a pond out the back, but frogs and froglets have made it into the front garden, and i was just worried that if we'd had the same summer this year as last year, that the leaf litter they were in would dry out, and them too. not going to be an excessively large pond, i got a 2.4x2m offcut of liner for cheap in pond hobby, so hoping to make a pond about 60cm deep and maybe 120cm x 150cm.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Fishing the river near the house this morning and yet again had a close encounter with an otter. He came to the bank where I was standing, sniffed the toe of my waders, looked up at me and slowly went on his way. A beautiful creature.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,477 ✭✭✭Kamili


    Fishing the river near the house this morning and yet again had a close encounter with an otter. He came to the bank where I was standing, sniffed the toe of my waders, looked up at me and slowly went on his way. A beautiful creature.

    wow what an experience!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Kamili wrote: »
    wow what an experience!

    Not the first time on this stretch of the river. But always an absolute joy.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    :D Warmer couple of days? He's been out on his rock, again.

    I didn't take the hint. Now, he's making his statement blunt!

    Sitting In His Food Bowl!


    P9180419tn.jpg
    God, how I Love toads! :D


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    14 Mistle Thrushes gorging on the Whitebeam berries today. Interesting watching them keep 100+ Starlings at bay.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,009 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    started to dig the front garden pond today. we have a pond out the back, but frogs and froglets have made it into the front garden, and i was just worried that if we'd had the same summer this year as last year, that the leaf litter they were in would dry out, and them too. not going to be an excessively large pond, i got a 2.4x2m offcut of liner for cheap in pond hobby, so hoping to make a pond about 60cm deep and maybe 120cm x 150cm.
    i filled the pond with water from the water butt, and put plants in it last week; some bought from pond hobby, some split from plants in the pond in the back garden.
    one thing i've just seen in the new pond which i've never seen in the back pond, is a diving beetle. i have to assume that the most likely source was the plants from pond hobby, but those plants were only sitting in a cm of water - so not submerged - when we bought them in pond hobby. or else we've had colonisation of the pond in record time.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    i filled the pond with water from the water butt, and put plants in it last week; some bought from pond hobby, some split from plants in the pond in the back garden.
    one thing i've just seen in the new pond which i've never seen in the back pond, is a diving beetle. i have to assume that the most likely source was the plants from pond hobby, but those plants were only sitting in a cm of water - so not submerged - when we bought them in pond hobby. or else we've had colonisation of the pond in record time.

    It could just as easily, and possibly more likely, have just flown in. Most nights there will be a dozen or more here on the window ledges outside, as they pass by from the nearby bog and lakes.


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,009 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    i figured that too, but seeing one in a pond that's only a week or two in, having not seen one in a pond that's been in place five years and is only 30m away just struck me as unusual.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    Been sat here, watching Netflix, for the last couple of hours. Between projects and the weather's gnarly.

    Just stood up though, for a stare out the window. And, I literally just stood there and Watched my gutterings fill up with ash leaves! :eek:

    There's some northerly puffs. And, each one of them's producing a Blizzard of ash leaves! Of course, the things are hitting my roofs. Rolling down and are now practically overflowing out of my gutters :( Hooded mac and ladder coming up.

    And, I was wondering if we'd get that 'new normal' hot break in september. What ye reckon? " Winter Is Coming "?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Following a thread earlier in the week, on the absence of birds in gardens at the moment: An article from BTO discussed the Autumn Trough

    ":Firstly, there tends to be plenty of natural food available for them at this time of year in the countryside. Secondly, many individuals are going through their post-breeding moult at this time of year".

    There seems to be a significant increase in grasshoppers around here this year, with many appearing in the garden. It'll be interesting to see if the long dry spell last year has led to increased numbers generally.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,054 ✭✭✭Fakediamond


    Stigura wrote: »
    Been sat here, watching Netflix, for the last couple of hours. Between projects and the weather's gnarly.

    Just stood up though, for a stare out the window. And, I literally just stood there and Watched my gutterings fill up with ash leaves! :eek:

    There's some northerly puffs. And, each one of them's producing a Blizzard of ash leaves! Of course, the things are hitting my roofs. Rolling down and are now practically overflowing out of my gutters :( Hooded mac and ladder coming up.

    And, I was wondering if we'd get that 'new normal' hot break in september. What ye reckon? " Winter Is Coming "?


    I wouldn’t exert myself til after Lorenzo, might tidy up all of our gardens and gutters, or not.....


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,408 ✭✭✭Stigura


    Thanks. I hadn't heard anything about this " Lorenzo ". Had me worried, for a minute :)

    Just a Tin Tester then. Doubt I'll even much notice it, unless I let the Dogs out at the height of it.

    I've had all my sitka's felled, some time since. Nothing endangers this place now. And, now I've been warned? I'll fill a flask of tea against the inevitable power cuts that'll follow ;)


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,764 ✭✭✭Bsal


    7 buzzard's circling overhead this afternoon and a handful of swallows still around the Swords area.


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,604 ✭✭✭Birdnuts


    ,

    Parents in North Kildare say the Swallows have gone these past few days - waiting now for the winter thrushes, some have already arrived on the North Coast apparently


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 32,688 ✭✭✭✭ Kayla Moldy Supernova


    Still a few swallows here in Louth.


  • Registered Users Posts: 348 ✭✭Pie Man


    Golden Plover around here in the midlands in small numbers. Swallows still knocking around.
    Lapwing seem to of had a good year breeding wise, in the midlands anyway.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 673 ✭✭✭Sharp MZ700


    Have a swallows nest under the gable pitch here in Cork, still a whole family here on the 3rd of October. Had cleaned the path a week ago thinking they were gone!


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