Last Thursday: I'm planting potatoes in a corner of the garden, trying a method I have used in the school garden: planting in old car tyres. (It does work!)
I found a curiously shaped object lying on the steps. On closer inspection, it turned out to be the dried-out, swollen body of a dead frog. The head was missing and there was a faint fishy smell.
I remember that two years ago I found a dead frog in the garden at about the same time of year, but don't know why. That time, it was lying on the path beside the clothes-line and I was consumed with horror at the thought that I might have stepped on it. After all the troulble I've gone to, to introduce frogs over the years.
This years casualty - did a fox get it? a cat? How long ago? the little flippers were dried, black and crackly.
Anyway, I'm sad for the dead frog but glad that they managed to breed at least twice.
Good Friday. Half-tail spotted in Martins. I strained my eyes to try and get a definite sex, but the creature was being as coy as a Disney heroine. Now it lay down, facing away, scratching. Then stood up, turned around, crouched facing me...but just behind a clump of dandelions. Then moved to a new pose, spreading out to groom belly...with a slender tree screening the mid-section!
I watched for about a quarter of an hour with binoculars, but it was modesty itself. I had to laugh!
More seriously, two foxes are using that garden regularly this week. Are they a couple? Some screaming at night as usual.
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1 comment:
Interesting reading - all that wildlife in suburban Dublin. Have now aquired a photo of one of your foxes asleep on garden shed early afternoon
Fee
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