We try to garden in a wildlife-friendly way, with a bit of “give and take”. At the moment the wildlife seems to think they should take,  and we should give! After a plague of slugs and snails we are now overrun with rabbits. The slugs ate whole rows of seedling lettuces, all of the summer cabbages, and made lace work of the potato leaves. We have not used the  blue slug pellets for years, and have seen an increase in the number of song thrushes as a result, so I sent off for some nematodes. These are watered  on to the soil and then seek out the slugs and eat them from the inside out!
In the meantime mice ate  the peas and beans as fast as I sowed them,  so a new cat, Charlie, has arrived.  He has proved very effective, but we do have to take a hand shovel to bed with us as he brings in live mice and wakes us up playing with them along the hall way.  A sharp thump with the shovel soon sorts them out though!
Six or seven years ago there were no rabbits in the garden at all, but oh how they have increased in the last couple of years! Just like rabbits really. The general increase has been great for buzzards and other top predators, but is not good news for veg growers. Our vegetable patch is surrounded by six foot high chain link fencing to keep the Muntjac out. Full sized rabbits cannot get through, but baby ones and teenagers just “melt” through it as if it was not there. Oh my poor peas! I have just spent the day putting fine mesh netting around the bottom of the chain link fence. As long as the rabbits do not start digging we may be all right. If not I will have to dig up some of the lawn and bury the netting!
Now I know why I like birds so much. The blue tits and great tits are all busy getting caterpillars for their young, the green woodpecker is eating ants from the lawn, and a song thrush is beating a snail to death on a stone. I do have some friends after all!
I have just looked out a recipe for rabbit pie. We may be short of veg, but there is plenty of meat about!
Wendy Bathurst