Nature, red in breast, tooth and claw

While lily beetles have been indulging in orgies in my front garden, the back garden has been host to a series of domestic dramas ...

Spring sprang into action with a pair of blue tits visiting my nest box. They were carrying estate agents' details, were measuring up for curtains and all that sort of thing. They were serious. However, several days passed and I saw no blue tit activity other than acrobatics on the seed feeders. Several more days passed, and the only person I noticed going into the nest box was a bumble bee. I didn't investigate the gender of the latter, but for the purposes of this discussion let's call it 'he'. He seemed to be a very frequent visitor and, indeed, still is. I felt that a bumblebee and blue tits in one confined space was not good news, though the fact that the bumblebee was still alive meant that he hadn't stung anyone.

The blue tits seemed to have deserted the nest.

However, it soon became apparent that the real cause of the exodus was probably not the bumblebee, but a pair of these (red breasts) who had taken up residence:



These charming birds are so aggressive you would not believe it! There were only transient visitors to the back garden from then on. Any brave bird who dared venture into the back garden was treated to a torrent of personal abuse which questioned their heritage, parentage and the size of their *******, prior to a thorough going over with robins' poo.

No wonder things became very quiet.

And then I became aware of these little warriors creating quite a lot of noise ... a predator which even they could not repel had entered the garden ...



Whoops, sorry, wrong pic. We all know that Falafel's far too short sighted to do any harm to birds, but look who'd really arrived:



Oh OK then, it was only a domestic moggie that lives next door, but this demanded instant action. I put a new battery into my cat repeller:




So far, it seems to have worked.