[Trevor Australis]

  Had a real chuckle over this question when I got home from delivering my new book Ms to a 'reader' for his opinion of it. As I got out of my car at his home, about 5km from Tupelo Grove nursery and 15km my reader came out of his garden shed with his finger over his lips. Duly warned to be quiet I followed him uphill and into the garden outskirts where he pointed out a small family of 6 mature kangaroos and 4 joeys. They were in his apple orchard on quite a steep slope. The bigger 'roos were standing on their hind legs with their fore-paws (with large claws) pulling down into easy reach apple tree branches laden with apples and leaves. Several of the branches had been stripped bare of fruit and leaves and some bark. We have had a very dry summer and there is no fresh grass so the apple trees must be very acceptable substitutes for herbage. The question is whether or not the 'roos will remember this summer fresh-food source and return year after year now they have discovered it, or forget it once rains bring the grass back. We may not have badgers but we do have 'roos, and now my wife informs me she frequently sees fallow deer on the freeway verges when she leaves for work around 5.00AM every weekday morning. Oh Dear.  tn

[Umbrian]

Further evidence that wherever we choose to live and garden we need be tolerant towards the native population and find ways to get along together.   

[Joanna Savage]

Oh Umbrian, how do we become tolerant? Just now I have seen jays making themselves at home in the garden. They are searching for the small birds as their food source. Now, what deters jays?

[JTh]

Nature sometimes seems cruel to us, but we have to accept that even jays need to be fed. We were out walking and we met an old lady who was watching some cats playing in a yard. She told us that one of them was a nice cat, but the other one was cruel, because it was chasing and killing birds and squirrels!
 But I admit I get annoyed when the suet balls I have been offering the tits and sparrows are gobbled up in five minutes by the magpies. We finally found some perfect feeders which have room for 3-5 suet balls, they have an extra wide-meshed ball on the outside which allows the smaller birds, and the birds love them. The photo  is not very good, it was taken from an upstairs window (as you can see, it's been snowing).

[Umbrian]

We too have colonies of Jays around us, they nest in the small wood below our pool and their raucous cackling can be really annoying apart from their preying on the smaller birds that nest in the garden.  I was delighted to find no magpies here, the scourge of our last garden in England, but soon came to realise that Jays are just as "bad" However I do think we have false values regarding wildlife in general and respond emotionally to animals and birds etc that look cute whilst hating others. A bit like weeds or insects etc in the garden, some are welcome and some definitely not. We love many butterflies for example but hate certain caterpillars, such as the Gypsy Moth ones that devestated our valley last year. Food chains within nature are very necessary and indeed the very basis of life and we have to learn not to respond so emotionally although I admit it is easier said than done. Old age helps

[KatG]

The badger problem has now paled into insignificance compared with the discovery of wild boar on a piece of land I own. A neighbour saw 12 of them nearby, drinking from a  trough of water provided for cattle.   The mess they have made is unbelievable. They have ploughed up large tracts of the olive grove, previously cloaked in Cyclamen in autumn.   Massive stones have been displaced, walling demolished, and the whole area stinks.  Happy as a pig in shit? I'm certainly not!