Fauna Archives - Helpful Colin

Dog Fouling Statistics

Preface

This post just brings to light matters which become obvious when calculations are made regarding the number of deposits dogs can make in their lifetimes. It doesn’t discuss dog fouling statistics regarding quantity as would be expected if weight measurements had been taken.

Introduction

I have a dog and live in England where the law compels everyone to remove their dogs mess from public places. This includes private land where the public have access. See Controlling your dog in public – 4. Dog fouling and Law & Your Environment – Dog Fouling.

As a dog owner I know it isn’t possible to pick up every mess a dog makes. Why? Dogs are not obliged to be on a lead everywhere so sometimes they defecate and it goes unnoticed. Such as:

in the dark at night where perhaps a dog should always be on a lead,
in deep snow where it melts through and then the snow falls in on top,
amongst autumn leaves which are the same colour,
in undergrowth which is difficult to penetrate (fortunately undergrowth guards a mess from others passing by).

This brings me to the point of this post:

What proportion of a dogs mess should the owner endeavour to pick up knowing they can’t meet a 100% target?

When I first considered this question I thought maybe 99% might be OK. Then I did some calculations.

I Found A Common Toad Hiding Behind My Shed

Introduction

During the 39 years I’ve lived at this house I have seen several frogs and toads passing through the garden. I was never able to say any actually lived here. Well now (6^th October 2017) I’ve found a Common Toad hiding behind my shed and living here.

Note: This Common Toad₁ is also known as a European Toad₁.

Give Dog Tablets Wrapped In Pastrami

Introduction

If you have ever tried to give medicine to an animal you’ll appreciate how hard it can be to give dog tablets to a dog. Our dog Leo (a Border Collie) is required to take two worming tablets every three months. These are large as tablets go. Large enough to be shaped like a bone. My wife offered one to him. He sniffed it and walked away.

Why aren’t they supplied inside some meaty treat to encourage a dog to just woof them down?

Pine Martens Are Saving The Red Squirrel

Introduction

I found an article in The Telegraph entitled, “Red squirrels are fighting back against the greys, experts claim.” It implies pine martens are saving the red squirrel as well as a grey squirrel trapping program is. That was introduced to reduce the grey population and give the reds a chance of survival.

The red squirrel shown in the featured image was seen in Doxford, Northumberland.

Pine Martens To The Rescue

Apparently predatory martens are saving the red squirrel (see image above) as they are inclined to eat grey squirrels which they find nice and plump. The pine marten can catch the grey because they move slowly. This has been found in a study of red squirrels in Northern Ireland where the pine marten isn’t so rare as first thought.

Are Goldfinches Eating Nyjer Seed? Yes!

Cleaning My Feeder

Spring 2014 is on the way and I want to see goldfinches eating nyjer seed again. So after a wet winter I have cleaned my bird feeders. I’ve only had a Nyjer Seed feeder for two years and have kept it out during both winters. I might not do that next winter since the rain soaks into them through the feeding holes and ruins the Nyjer seeds below the top perches of the feeder. Some start to grow, the rest rot and go mouldy. Any goldfinches that come along can’t eat the seed and in the end it’s just wasted. Above the perches it stays dry so it can be salvaged. In my case I separated the good seed and made sure it was dry by spreading it out on a dustpan in the sunshine.

I completely dismantled my feeders for mixed seed and nyjer seed and washed all the parts in soapy water and then reassembled them when dry.

Here is a good article about feeding nyjer seed to goldfinches from East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Fieldfares Visited Alvaston Derby In January 2013

Fieldfare – Turdus pilaris – a member of the thrush family.

When Fieldfares visited Alvaston Derby I was ready with my camera.

On 22nd January 2013 Fieldfares visited Alvaston Derby where I saw them. First I saw them in my garden and later in a tree overhanging my friend’s garden across the road in the same street. Of course I don’t know that they were the same pair of birds in both gardens.

Fieldfares migrate to England in winter from northern Europe but this was my first sighting of them. It was a bad winter with a fair amount of snow in early 2013 so I’m sure they came looking for food.

I Held a Young Goldfinch Today. It Was Stunning.

Introduction

What a wonderful experience. I wish I had taken a photo. I looked out of my lounge window and a young goldfinch was resting on my patio within 0.5m of the window. It didn’t attempt to fly off so I went outside. I knelt down on the ground and got within 0.5m of it. It was trying to sleep with its head resting over its back. Its wings were neatly folded so I thought it looked OK and not damaged.

My New Bird Bath

My Old Bird Bath

For some while I have been using a white rectangular butcher’s meat tray as a bird bath during freezing winter months and dry summer months when birds need access to fresh water. It has rested either on the ground, or on a garden seat, or on top of a large Victorian plant pot when the summer flowers have died back. The stark whiteness of the tray and the depth of water (10cm) have, I think, put birds off. The only ones I have seen using it have been occasional blackbirds. Also I feel they need it near the ground but not actually on it.

Northumberland Wildlife – Red Squirrel Included

Introduction

There was plenty of Northumberland wildlife – Red Squirrel included – near Doxford Cottages this May (2012). I have seen the following within 6m of my living room: Brown Rat, Red Squirrel, male & female Great Spotted Woodpecker, male & female Chaffinch, male Robin, Blue tit, Coal Tit, Great Tit, Green-finch, Nuthatch, Wood Pigeon, Crow, Rook, Jackdaw, Sparrow, male & female Pheasant, male Blackbird.

All these creatures have been attracted by a peanut feeder, wild bird seed feeder and a squirrel feeding box. The birds, and brown rat, that can’t feed from the bird feeders (and those that can) have been attracted by the fallout from the feeders on the ground beneath.

Surprisingly the following birds have been able to feed from the seed feeders: Rook, Crow, Jackdaw, Wood Pigeon. The Jackdaw can cling onto the feeders with wire mesh which holds peanuts. They can all reach the transparent seed feeder by perching on the wooden squirrel food box (see my rook picture below). All the feeders are attached to a telephone pole so they are close to each other.

Goldfinches Feeding In My Garden

Introduction

I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have goldfinches feeding in my garden regularly now I have erected a nyjer seed feeder. See this one in my feature image.

A friend across the road has goldfinches feeding regularly but I never have. Why? They never had anything to feed on in my garden. So I bought this expensive feeder, which holds fine nyjer seeds, from the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) together with some seed.

Here is a good article about goldfinches feeding on nyjer seed from East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

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My Latest News

6th October 2019: I have in the last few months worked through all my blog posts and pages and converted them from Classic Editing mode to Block Editing mode. While doing this I have found posts that had problems which I fixed. In particular with linked videos which were no longer working. I deleted one post amongst these. I may be tempted to delete more posts which are no longer relevant and just take up space on the server.

Along with the list of contents introduced to longer posts I have added a list of pictures too. I have been able to do this by giving the pictures their own headings. They could be interspersed with the contents but I am keeping them separate at the moment.

On some posts I have introduced a Preface to give a simple description of the post. This enables me to put the contents before the introduction.

The contents are compiled from all the headings in a post and underlined. These can be selected in the normal way in order to navigate straight to them. This should save a lot of scrolling for anyone who is referring to a post and its pictures to help them fix the item described.

NOTE: I have noticed that selecting a heading might not scroll all the way to it at the first attempt. Successive attempts during the same viewing get nearer. I hope to get this fixed in the course of time.

I have found that the reason the headings on small screens aren’t emboldened is because they aren’t set to use a bold font. On large screens there isn’t an issue because the headings look like headings anyway. However I use Jetpack to convert my blog for display on mobiles which displays headings as normal or bold according to how they are set. So I will be emboldening headings to give a better display on mobiles as and when i get around to it.

NOTE: I do expect most people to read my blog on a mobile phone these days. So I will try to keep it looking good for them.

3rd June 2019: I’ve had a go at making testimonials look better. The previous method was a mess so I’ve used the Kadence Testimonials block to produce a testimonials page with two neat columns which are now accessed from the Posts menu since they all originate via Post Comments.

1st June 2019: Continuing to edit using blocks I have changed to a Kadence FAQ block to display Frequently Asked Questions and their answers. I spotted a problem with the accordion block and Ben Ritner has very kindly edited the block to resolve it. There has been some editing of the Qs & As and you might find I mess with it some more.

I have also begun using the Contents Table block by Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg to show the contents of my posts. I am inserting this block after the Introduction. If I put it first, as it would be in a book, it causes some issues:

In my list of posts that is shown in reverse date order I only want the Introduction or part thereof to be seen. If I put the contents block first that will be seen. It will take up a lot of screen space and won’t be very interesting.
The contents block links to all the headings used in the post but that doesn’t work when it’s viewed in the list of post snippets described in 1 above.

Continue to My Latest News Archive.

Site Construction

The site helpfulcolin.com was originally built in September 2011 by Digitalog© now Wolf & Player using the Side Blog theme and handed over to Helpful Colin by his mentors in December 2011. It was changed to a ‘Twenty Fourteen’ child theme in February 2014 by Helpful Colin.

The theme was changed again in December 2015 when WordPress version 4.4 became active and Helpful Colin changed the theme to the ‘Twenty Sixteen’ theme which is designed to look good on all screen sizes. Although this may have improved the blog for mobile users it has removed some functionality available in ‘Twenty Fourteen’.

Helful Colin took on board Gutenberg at an early stage and has since converted all posts to use the block editing format. The current version of WP used at 30/09/2019 is 5.2.3. Jetpack is used to convert the Helpful Colin posts to display correctly on mobile devices.