Some Wild Garden Action

I came across this graffiti in Camden when walking along the canal a couple of weeks ago. Nothing like a wild-eyed Staffy to brighten my day!

More reading yesterday morning. I learned the Lib Dems won in our local elections -- apparently plenty of other voters felt as I did, that they were the most promising candidates on the ballot.

Then I took another walk after lunch, just a wide loop around the neighborhood via Maygrove Peace Park and the cemetery. The weather was perfect. It's so nice to get out and walk in a t-shirt. My only complaint is that we have had no significant rain for at least a month. It's dry as a bone out there, the ground is cracked, and although the lawn and most plants seem to be doing OK we could sure use some moisture.

I lost a couple of my cosmos seedlings to pigeons, which plucked the heads off them as if they were corn for the picking. And I lost my biggest zinnia to a slug or snail. I'm down to three surviving zinnias, four sunflowers and five cosmos.

Remember my old habit of picking up china shards while walking, on Hampstead Heath in particular? Well, I found these during my walk on Friday and added them to my bowl. Lots of Blue Willow, or something similar. I'm intrigued by that bit at far left with the lettering -- looks like "acs L" or perhaps "acs D." I tried Googling to figure out what it might come from. When I uploaded a photo, the AI assistant helpfully said, "This is a ceramic shard featuring cursive script." Yeah, thanks for that.

Further Googling tried to tell me it comes from this pottery, which is just wrong. The font doesn't match and the wording isn't right. I think it's French based on the fact that a word ends with "acs," but who knows. There's just not enough of it to tell.

We had a crazy week on the garden cam! Some very unusual activity and lots of it, which is why I have a nine-minute video featuring birds, squirrels, rodents, wandering pets and, yes, foxes. As usual I'll list everything below, with the most interesting moments in red in case you'd like to jump ahead.

We begin with Sharpie sniffing around. Then:
-- At 0:15, a little mouse comes out of a nearby bush. Man, that thing can jump!
-- At 0:36, Q-Tip (or some fox with a white-tipped tail) comes by.
-- It's followed at 0:51 by a black cat. This is not Blackie, who is all black. This is a different cat, much fluffier.
-- At 1:37, a fox is back. Looks like Crooked Tail. It sees something at the back of the garden and takes off after it.
-- At 1:51, squirrel and pigeon.
-- At 2:05, Sharpie is back, followed by Q-Tip, and then at 2:56 by Crooked Tail. (Again, my fox differentiation is not absolute.)
-- At 3:13, SQUIRREL PANIC!
-- At 3:22, Crooked Tail.
-- At 3:31, a starling.
-- At 3:39, squirrel long jump!
-- At 3:49, some kind of LBT (sparrow?) intimidates a pigeon.
-- At 4:10, a great tit flutters in, followed at 4:17 by a dunnock on the ground.
-- At 4:22, Crooked Tail is back.
-- At 4:34, a robin flutters up to perch on the camera.
-- At 4:53, you see my legs as I'm trimming our hazel tree. (I guess I count as wildlife!)
-- At 5:13, Crooked Tail comes by.
-- At 5:26, the mouse is back.
-- At 5:43, we see another tit hopping around.
-- At 5:59 we get some brilliant daytime footage of (I believe) Sharpie. It really shows off his or her coloring.
-- At 6:39, the dunnock is back.
-- At 6:49, I put down a couple of pork chop scraps for the foxes.
-- At 6:58, an unwelcome surprise! A RAT appears and carries away the pork! I've learned my lesson about feeding the foxes.
-- At 7:09, a fox appears and sniffs around, but the rat has apparently made off with all the food. This is followed by lots of coming-and-going by a couple of different animals, I believe, all within the span of about half an hour. They probably smell the meat but they're too late.
-- At 8:28, that friggin' rat is back.
-- At 8:48, a fox trots past. It's early morning, so you can really hear the dawn chorus, mainly robins and blackbirds.
-- At 9:08, there's a horrible screech, and then Pale Cat chases a fox past the camera!