h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is a very touching story and so true. It made me feel sad for the plight of all the animals, forced to live outside of their natural home.

Extremely well written, thankyou for sharing this.

Nice of you to give me such a positive comment. Thank you very much

The way things are going, it looks as though some - far too many - species won't be able to survive outside of zoos. It's too sad for words really

You're welcome

When i was a child long long ago, wildlife was so common. Now some of those creatures that i watched as a child are in danger of extinction, loss of habitat and pollution being the main cause. It makes you wonder how it will be in 20 years time.

And it's not just the animals and plants that were common when we were children (a long time ago for me too), some species that were common only a short time ago seem to be getting more and more rare. I feed the garden birds and I used to feed the hedgehogs. My garden used to be visited by flocks of sparrows and starlings to the extent that the starlings used to annoy my neighbours. Now the sparrows come in ones and twos or not at all and there were no starlings last year. This year there's a small flock of starlings - not many more than half-a-dozen. The hedgehogs that used to be crashing about all over my garden every night in the summer only 3 or 4 years ago, have disappeared all together. I wonder why

Theres no shortage of Starlings round here, but Sparrows is a different matter. Like you i feed the birds and have noticed the marked decline in the House sparrow. There is a group of 4-6 that regularly visit the feeders, but thats it. Who would have thought that such a common bird, would now be a rare sight
I sometimes wonder, if we are at the point of no return regarding the safety of some flora and fauna. It would be a shame if our future relatives were never able to enjoy a pretty butterfly on a flower; or hear a Thrush sing at dawn.

Starlings are in decline in some places and not others as far as I understand it. There's more than one population and, unusually some of the populations migrate and some of them stay put. We used to have quite a big population in my area. Great flocks of them would do the most amazing aerobatic displays. Now I get all excited if I see a couple of dozen doing those fabulous morphine patterns across the sky. I guess it starts off with falling populations and then local extinctions and then the plunge from which there's no return. As the song goes, "you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

It's hard to get some people to consider future generations. To me, it seems like stealing the future from our descendents - putting so many wonderful species at risk, just so that we can have all the things we want right now. I suppose that, in the absence of any real will on the part of governments, we just have to hope that enough individuals will see things the way we do.

I have seen flocks of Starlings gathering and producing those amazing shapes in the sky, but it was a long time ago.

It's nice to meet a kindred spirit, who cares as much about wildlife as i do Unfortunately we are still in a minority and our voices are tiny in the big scheme of things
I try and do my bit for the local flora and fauna, by making my garden a haven for birds, amphibians and other creatures. It might not seem like much, but the rewards are great

Sounds as though you're doing plenty. Especially when you consider how 'normal' it is to pave over gardens or use herbicides and slug pellets and the like. My garden is a satisfying sort of mess with birds and bird feeders everywhere - back and front. The things that grow there are the things that are tough enough to survive all the pecking, scratching and the competition from the bird seeds that drop and grow. Not that many of the bird seeds get very far. Sunflowers, hemp and millet all have a go but usually get eaten or trampled before they get past the seedling stage of growth. During day-light hours the activity in the gardens is far more interesting than anything I might find on the telly

Do you get a good variety of birds visit your feeders?
I love to watch the birds from my kitchen window, when i'm at home. I'm lucky enough to live next to an apple orchard, so i get lots of visitors to the garden.
I've also managed to attract some unusual plants too. A few years back a Common spotted Orchid appeared in my lawn. A year later i discovered two Bee Orchids had also taken up residence. These plants are my pride and joy and i'm hoping that in time they will mulitply

There are more birds than usual at the moment. There have been days when I haven't needed to refill the feeders, but just now, they seem very hungry. Apart from the depleted gangs of sparrows and starlings, there are quite a few green finches, a few chaffinches and gold finches, quite a lot of blue tits, a few great tits, dunnocks and wrens, very rarely a bunch of long-tailed tits, some robins, black birds, nuthatches, the occasional great spotted woodpecker and a great many collared doves. I haven't seen a thrush for ages.

If you live close to an orchard, I expect you see a few bull finches too. I see one from time to time, but they're not very common round here. I've been putting an apple out for the birds every day for the past month or so. By the time I get home from work, all that's left is a hollow skin. I'm not sure which birds eat them but I guess the blackbirds and possibly the starlings like them. The collared doves can be a bit of a nuisance on the feeders because they eat until they can hardly move then just sit there - one by each feed hole, stopping the small birds from feeding. They're lovely birds but when you're trying to help the falling populations of British wild birds, it's a bit vexing when these very numerous, non-British birds hoover up all the grub. Ah well. Bless 'em

Good luck with those orchids. How wonderful! Dare you mow the lawn?

Despite living next to an orchard, i havent seen any Bullfinches in at least a decade There were once several breeding pairs round these parts, but they are rare here now.
I get the same variety of birds that you do, but not Nuthatches, i've never seen a nuthatch. We have a very healthy population of Jays and longtailed tits visit the feeders in small flocks They have to be my favourite visitor, along with the Great spotted woodpecker, Pheasants and Green woodpecker.
Last year there was a Blackcap that made my garden it's home for the summer. Not much to look at, but his song was beautiful

Mowing my lawn is an art in itself It's like an obstacle course going round the Orchids, then theres all the Cowslips that also make my lawn their home.
I do an inspection each year, before mowing the grass for the first time. It's a good job i do, as i found a new Bee Orchid Thursday.
My neighbours must think i'm a bit weird as i go round the garden almost on my hands and knees looking for plants It gets even worse in the summer, when i'm out there photographing bugs and caterpillars

Oh dear. If you don't see bull finches any more and you live right by an orchard, that's bad news. I also see a few coal tits on the feeders. One reason the birds all disappear from time to time, for weeks on end, is sparrow hawks also regard my garden as a feeding area. There are other birds in the area that never or hardly ever visit my garden. There are lots of pheasants, crows and magpies, but they very rarely venture in. I think a willow tit or a marsh tit or something that looked similar, visited my garden a couple of summers ago. It stayed around for a few weeks, driving me mad rifling through bird books trying to find out what it was. My brother, who lives about 6 miles from me, has a bit of woodland and a stream running through his garden and he sees kingfishers, owls, buzzards, jays. The neighbours opposite to my office are visited by green woodpeckers too. They had a problem with great spotted woodpeckers last year. The big bandits were breaking into nest boxes and eating all the blue tit chicks. They took all the boxes down last autumn and every one of them had a large extra hole hammered through, so they fixed metal plates over the fronts ready for this summer's broods. My guess is, the woodpeckers will go in through the sides of the boxes instead. Hope not, but we'll see.

Another creature that I'm very fond of and that seems to have disappeared from my neighbourhood, is the bats

Thinking about you mowing your lawn has reminded me of something that used to make us laugh when I was a school girl (long time ago). There was a lady down the road who could often be seen in the summer, crawling around on her lawn with what looked like a pair of nail scissors, with her bottom in the air and her nose almost to the ground. We wondered what on earth she could have been doing. Now I have an idea or two to explain it

I can see why the birds disappear if there is a Sparrow hawk about.
We get kestrels or is it falcons, i'm not sure which. They don't come into my garden though.
I've never seen a kingfisher in the feather so to speak, it must be a wonderful sight
Should i be worried about the nest box i put up last year? I have seen the bluetits checking it out, whether they will use it remains to be seen. I would be very upset if the resident woodpeckers broke into it.

Apparently there are bats round here, but i've never seen or heard them. With lots of open fields around, maybe they find better hunting there.

When i first moved into this house, there was an elderly couple living next door. The old chap would be in his garden, on his hands and knees with his nose almost to the ground. Slowly working his way up and down his lawn. I once asked his wife what he was doing, apparently he was looking for weeds. Because his eyesight was so poor he had to get right down to the ground. The old lady once siad to me, that the silly old fool would probably pops his clogs on the lawn looking for weeds Maybe i should stop this eccentric practice of crawling around on the lawn, before people start talking

I hope you don't mind, but i've added you to my friends list. Of course if you do object it can easily be removed
We have far more in common that i realised, a fascination for bugs being one and in pain alot of the time being another.

I used to go out to watch the bats in my back garden. They swooped around hunting moths attracted to the light. Now there are hardly any moths either. That's probably the reason the bats have gone. Perhaps the moths would come back if people stopped using pesticides.

Don't change your eccentric behaviour at all. We should have helped the neighbour lady with her bum in the air if we'd known what she was up to and if she'd asked. She was a character and that's why I remember her.

I'm very honoured to be on your friends list. Thank you very much Now I've updated my friends list too and put a link to it on my PS. It's the moving text in the gold stripe about 3/4 of the way down the page, just before my Journal Entries.

Sorry you're at the bottom but that's only because it's in alphabetical order

And sorry to hear you're in pain too There's a surprising number of people here at h2g2 who struggle with health problems. They make me feel almost normal - almost

Things would improve greatly, if people stopped using pesticides.
I once had a customer ask me for something to kill butterflies, i could'nt believe what i was hearing. I asked her why she wanted to kill them, and she said they were eating her cabbages. It took a while for me to convince her that it was'nt the butterflies doing the damage, that i was more likely slugs or caterpillars. I then went on to explain that butterflies have no mouth parts to be able to eat cabbages. She was'nt easy to convince, or persuade to not use harmful chemicals. People see a bug and are willing to use anything to get rid of it
I have to admit, i sometimes get on my soap-box regarding customers and their use of chemicals. It's got me in hot water a couple of times

There does'nt seem to be any shortage of moths rounds here, maybe that because the bats are elsewhere. I love to see moths, especially the big Hawk moths. Most years i get Elephant hawk moth caterpillars on my Fuschias And me being a bit strange, i photographed one sitting on a ruler; just to record how long it was

Thankyou for adding me to your list and saying such nice things too

I know a fair few of hootooers that have health problems in varying degrees. I think the nice thing is, you can choose to talk about your health, or pretend you're not unwell in the virtual world.
See i cant' do this in the real world
Sorry if i'm rambling a bit, i had a back tooth extracted today, and i think i'm still a bit floaty after the anesthetic

Yes, it's a shame about the casual use of pesticides. I wrote a letter to our village newsletter a couple of years ago because I kept passing gardens where they'd put down so many slug pellets that all the soil looked turquoise. If you have to use them at all, why not follow the instructions on the box. A thin sprinkling would be plenty. Talk about over-kill!

Butterflies are suckers not munchers. The ones that hang around the cabbages are just looking for somewhere to lay their eggs. Still, I suppose your customer would be keen to stop them doing that too. One of my neighbours has a life-time invitation to chuck her unwanted slugs, snails and caterpillars into my garden rather than spray them. It's no good though. Touching them gives her the heebee geebees. Every now and then, I go and collect them if I see her gardening

The lack of moths really bothers me. They used to be a real nuisance in the summer, if a light was on and a window was left open. There'd be loads of them flying round and bouncing off the light. Now there are hardly any. All the other flying insects too. The RSPB did a study - last year I think it was. They asked people to count the splatted insects on their car windscreens and radiators. Again, they used to be covered in the poor little blighters and now there are very few. Lots of birds depend on them so it's no wonder their populations are also declining.

In any case, it's good to know there's still some insect life where you are. And a ruler sounds a very sensible place to photograph the caterpillar of a spectacular moth to give an idea of its size.

The thing about keeping mum about health problems is, I worry people might think I'm being stand-offish because I don't go on line ever so often, don't usually stay long and sometimes it takes a long time to get around to replying. It's because I can't stand or sit for long. I hope online friends will understand. Well, I expect you know what I mean any way

For some reason, there are people that think the more slug pellets they put, the more slugs they are going to kill It would be nice if people were more informed and interested in how to control pests, without the use of pesticides. Mind you, the speed at which garden chemicals are being banned, means there is hope on the horizon.

I did see the survey the RSPB did and it was indeed a worrying result. All the more important to feed the birds eh!

Hooray! At last someone can understand why i photographed that caterpiller on a ruler. It's a bit like those anglers that claim 'it was THIS big' but never have any evidence to back it up

A couple of years ago, i found a very interesting moth on my Hebe. It almost became my mission in life to identify this thing. Despite having several good books on butterflies & moths, it was'nt in any of them There was a moment when i thought i'd discovered a new species Anyway, i spent a while in a book shop, perusing their insect books. Eventually i found it. It was a Red-belted clearwing moth. Apparently the larvae live under the bark on apple trees, which would explain why the moths come to my garden. One of the odd thing about them is, they come in varying sizes. I did manage to get a reasonably good picture of the moth, always a bonus There were loads of them last year, along with some bee-fly's, which would'nt settle long enough to photograph.

I don't think any of your friends would find you stand-offish, and i certainly dont