So-called because of the unusual blotchy mark rather than the more familiar dark streak on his breast feathers….Blotch is one of the birds currently showing an interest in nesting in the Sparrow terrace nest-box at the front of the house. He also nested in there successfully last year.

A lady from a village just over the hill from me tapped me on the shoulder at my local garage a couple of weeks ago and asked if  I knew anything about rats because she’d got one! She told me that she’d contacted a pest-controller, but that he’d turned up at her house a bit more p*ssed than pest and had tried to insist that poison was the best, if not the only option….adding that she didn’t need to worry because it was “a completely harmless poison” (his words) and wouldn’t therefore, be a danger to any other animals!However, she was very worried about using ANY type of poison, simply because she has two small dogs and an apparently large, but rat-phobic cat who all enjoy complete freedom of both the house and the garden. In addition, she looks after her three young grandchildren two afternoons a week and was also afraid that a poisoned rat might easily crawl into a wall-cavity or floor-space and end up dying there! Understandably therefore, she said NO to the poison!A disgruntled Mr Pesty subsequently decided to lay a few snappy-type spring-traps instead and finished by saying he’d be back in a day or two….He also suggested that the lady should check the traps occasionally for herself and call him if anything transpired!

A week later however, the rat was still active and the traps were still empty….She finally rang Mr Pesty to ask him to come and take the traps away!Mmm….Over the years, I’ve grown to understand that rats are emotional and intelligent little critters….intelligent that is, in a kind of inversely proportional way to pest-controllers (I could write a book about it….and perhaps I should). Therefore, I set off to the lady’s house that very afternoon with my trusty, self-designed and totally humane rat-trap which I eventually set up near the garden shed after first working out exactly how the animal preferred to negotiate the area.On this occasion, I chose to use a very special brand of rat-bait developed after thousands of hours of exhaustive research and “live” testing on human Guinea-pigs by Birmingham-based scientists at the outset of the Cold War….namely, a Cadbury’s chocolate finger!I returned the next morning to collect “Ratty” (above) who I then released (just like the Wood Mouse shown on the “Home” page of www.wildliferanger.com) from the cage/trap about an hour later….having first driven with him in the back of the vehicle to a remote spot miles from anywhere!That’s “SMUG” by the way, with a capital S M U and G)!

Like so many of the things I come across on my travels, I’m not entirely sure what this is. There was plenty of it around, standing about half a metre tall, near the edge of a Cotswold lake and my best guess would be some kind of Sedge as the stems were three-sided….perhaps it’s a type of Cottongrass.Meanwhile, I know that many of you out there will know exactly what it is, but I can’t even find it in any of my books, so I shall have to return to the site later in the Spring!

I took this picture today (12th January, 2008) for the benefit of those people who e-mail me to enquire about the health and well-being of “Scraps” the one-legged Chaffinch (see further down this page). Well, as you can see, “Scraps” is doing just fine and, despite the snow that’s fallen up here in the hills during the last twenty four hours and the sudden drop in temperature, he’s having no difficulty helping himself to the food I put down for him in the garden.Mind you, what amuses me about this tough, resilient and determined little bird, is the “nobody loves me” kind of expression always present on his face. He invariably looks as though he’s all got all the problems of the world resting squarely on his tiny feathery little shoulders….but then, wouldn’t you if you had to get by the best you can all alone in a world that shows no mercy and takes no prisoners!