Great. Had to be him or Edward!

Thomas?

My favourite Dorset-dialect poem about loss is Barnes' : The Geate A-Vallen To/

https://allpoetry.com/The-Geate-A-Vallen-To 

A few years ago they would nearly trip you up at night when i was out checking in calf cows and heifers .They bumble along sometimes without looking where they are going . Not quite so many about round here now and that is probably a good thing and surprise , surprise the hedgehogs are returning.

There is a huge badger population here but most people are unaware of it. We live in the middle of a fair sized village but know the signs and have a trail cam in the garden. "Oh no - it's squirrels" I am told! Then I show them the clips. They will hoover up hedgehogs. The rescue people will not re-home HHs to known badger locations.

Badgers always seem mildly exotic (and dangerous) to me, but that's because on Sheppey we have none - no moles, either, but we do have a colony of scorpions living in the wall of the docks. Up until the late 80s we had no foxes, either, but (to the annoyance of farmers/chicken owners and the delight of the Tickham hunt back in the day) we now have them... there are two schools of thought as to how they got here.

One, multiple foxes walked over the quarter mile bridge, some 25 years after it was built, or two, some foxes were released one night by animal rights folks. The farmers reckon it's the second option, and bearing in mind the bridge was the main A249, with a railway, and traffic day and night careening over it at 60mph+ - they could be right.

I've tripped over one in the dark and they bark like little terriers.

As you say they are partial to hedgehogs.

Could this be the origin of the term "doggy bag"? I'm joking of course. The East Anglian dialect term term "Docky" or "Docky Bag" was the packed lunch you took to work so your wages would not be "docked" for taking a lunch break. I discover that Google AI can discover that in a search - but my information is entirely of human origin! I've heard it used "for real" in Cambridgeshire. The term "Doggy Bag" is a later invention of obvious pedigree. 🐕

DOCKY BAG - 2019

https://www.rupertmallin.co.uk/2019/01/docky-bag-2019.html 

Yes, I saw it on the BBC site last week!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g0y8l9zvyo 

I can't say that wolves are very good at distributing seeds very far, mind you, as their fur is such that seeds just fall off... and especially if they shake! They're not like the neighbour's spaniel, which disappears into a hedge and comes out with all sorts of seeds and bits of grass / weeds lodged in the fur, which have to be painstakingly removed.

I've seen ticks on the wolves before, though (a tick tool is handy to have), and I've seen - and smelt - fox poo on them multiple times as well. They adore rolling in smelly things, the pongier the better. Some dogs do that too, so I've heard!

Follow-up article 

Where have all the wasps gone?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c134621devzo 

I've also seen a report that bats are suffering due to diminished numbers of insects following the wet spring. I wonder if this has affected swallows too - or did they return from migration late enough to take advantage of an uptick in insect numbers?

"There are over 7,000 species of wasp living in the UK, comprising a huge variety of solitary and social species. The majority are parasitoids, which have young that eat insects or spiders alive. But you may be more familiar with the black and yellow social species."

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-do-wasps-do.html 

Observation

3/8/2024

Tit flock across garden and into some lime trees early afternoon, 40+ with

30+ being long tailed tits. The rest Blue Tits. An unusual sight.

"My" bat seems to be doing okay, but there's no shortage of insects in my garden! There'll be even more soon thanks to the windfall apples I've left on the ground in the "wild" bit...

As for swallows, my neighbour reports plenty of them at her stables a few miles away, and says they seem to be gathering in greater numbers than usual. She thinks that means a bad winter on the way, but aside from a "bad" winter being all but impossible these days, I reckon it's just that they've found a good source of flies!

I've only seen a handful of wasps this summer, mind you. Something happened around 10 years ago and since then the once-common wasp seems to have almost vanished.

We have a healthy buddleia bush which is usually well populated by a range of butterflies in the summer, but this year all I have seen is a handful of white butterflies and one tiny blue one which seems to be a permanent resident in one corner of our garden.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cj3551xvx16o 

Turns out it wasn't a person (thankfully), but rather "my" sparrows pecking around on the ancient old patio, joined by a blackbird. I reckon they were hunting for ants, as I think there's a nest under there!

https://ukwct.org.uk/weather/notperson.jpg 

We sat in the garden yesterday with 2 naturalist friends, listening to our local music festival in the pub car park opposite, drinking tea and and eating cake. We saw both a common darter and a hawker hunting over the garden. A flash of blue made me think "Migrant Hawker". I always find it disconcerting when an insect makes "eye contact", but odonata do seem to do that. But insects were few. Only a couple of butterfly species. One mate is a fly expert and got excited because there was one horsefly about! 😁

https://www.naturespot.org.uk/family/aeshnidae 

https://www.bats.org.uk/about-bats/what-are-bats/uk-bats/noctule 

What do you use to find that out Roger?

Re: your subsequent post, despite being near-absent for much of summer, the wasps have appeared in force this last week.

You mention plums- our plum gtree has zero fruits for the first time ever, and all of the local damson, mirabelle and cherry plums are fruitless too, in contrast to the apples.

I wonder if wasps somehow manage to subconsciously respond to the conditions that cause this (or just remain latent until they smell plum!)