Wednesday 14th September 2005 Garden Dumpton
Thanet
The garden feeders were busier than normal today with
4 Blue Tits, 3 Great Tits, 2 Green Finches and about
30 House Sparrows and 7 Starlings, and on the lawn were 5 Collard
Doves, 1 Robin and 5 Dunnocks, (Gadget)
Thursday 1st September 20005 Garden Minster
Thanet
A story of Grass Snakes in my garden at Minster this summer.
In June a large female about 3 and a half-foot long was seen in my pond
on two different occasions, but never saw her catch anything. In July I
saw her again and took the photo of her eating a frog in mid July. Photo
two is of her re adjusting her jaws after eating the frog. A week ago I decided to clean up my compost
heaps and the one I was going to use produced photo three, the Grass
Snake was there, and as you can see by the milky eyes she was about to
slough. Beside is a clutch of eggs presumably hers. Over the last week I
have seen three other Grass Snakes in the same compost heap ranging
from 2ft in size to 9 inches, also keeping them company are three Slow
Worms. Must be a reptilian heaven. My books say the eggs
take between 6 to 10 weeks to hatch, so will be keeping an eye on them.
Despite all this I still have a reasonable number of Frogs in and
around my pond. (Don
Wilks)
