A grisly find

There’s no doubt about it that wood pigeons are one of our most annoying pests both at the allotment and at home. They’ll devastate any brassica crops left unprotected not to mention the damage they do to fruit crops. 

 

One of the problems is that they don’t seem to have any natural predators. I might occasionally find the remains of a dead bird at the allotment. I’ve put that down to foxes and at home we occasionally see a sparrowhawk but that tends to prey on small birds.

 

However, there have been sightings at the allotment of a goshawk taking down at least two wood pigeons. Then under our plum trees I found these remains.

 

They look as though something has had another wood pigeon. That makes three killed in a couple of days. Perhaps a predator has arrived to help itself to the plentiful supply of wood pigeons.

 

On the weather front, there’s very little to report as we seem to be heading for a fairly average March. The last week has been dry and dull although when the sun has managed to put in an appearance it’s felt quite pleasant. 

 

The temperature for the month is around average with no unusually low or high values.  We’ve had a dryer spell of weather over the last week which is helping the allotment to dry out. Unless we get some particularly wet weather towards the end of the month rainfall will finish up below average.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett