u/colourofsweetlove

I thought it was dead so I placed it on a flower, and a few days later a wasp egg dropped out of it 🐝 It had been implanted in the ladybird and when hatched, it stuck to the ladybird as a shield. The day after that, it had managed to crawl away, but its feet were still sticky with wasp glue, so I washed its tiny feet with water until it could walk properly. I also shielded the wasp egg under the flower petals so that was still safe #savethebugs #britishwildlife

The caterpillars eat Willowherb plants, cocoon in the soil over winter, and emerge as these beautiful Elephant Hawk Moths. They eat jasmine and honey suckle plants. I protected the cocoons outdoors so they were completely safe and still in their natural territory! 💖

I started feeding the birds for my indoor cats to watch, but I only managed to attract pigeons so I catered exclusively to them, a big spacious feeder, pigeon food, I've even got cabbage growing for them to eat. I can stand in within a metre of them and take their photos which I draw studies of, and I'm even starting to attract magpies and jackdaws which is really, really exciting!

My cats and I spend hours in the garden watching the pigeons. The cats can't sneak up on them to catch them, but they're always supervised in the garden anyway so I wouldn't let them kill one of the pigeons even if they managed it. They can't jump high enough.

I didn't realise that they were swooping over my neighbour's garden to get to mine, and they were leaving droppings on their patio. My neighbours put out cat deterrent that malfunctioned and beeped a loud alarm. We argued about this and I moved my bird feeder further away from my window, and bought the shelving unit for them to land on instead of the fence, but I'm very limited with the space I have because my garden is so small, I have to step into the shrubbery to access the feeder which isn't possible, and I wouldn't see it when I work from home next to the only window I have to the garden because my property is so small.

We got into an argument yesterday because she placed the cat deterrent a foot away from my garden and pointed it in my direction, and it was broke again and emitting an alarm. I told her the correct supersonic beeping was fine (it doesn't even do it's job of deterrring the cats and birds), but the loud alarm is not okay. She said she hates how her own dog barks at anything it sees in her garden, even though it doesn't bother me, the cats, or the pigeons, just her. She again complained about the birds but said she was putting up this bamboo screen as shown in the image 2 and 3. The pigeons still land on it, and I'm hopeful they don't swoop over her patio and poo on it, and I understand that's really annoying to deal with and terrible to have to clean, especially because about 7 pigeons visit daily.

I'm just really sad because while I'd rather have an ugly bamboo screen than a beeping noise, I'm constantly on edge that she's going to get angry with me that I moved the feeder a foot closer to the window than I said I would, but that was before the fence was up. Now I feel it makes no difference where the feeder is because the fence is so high, the pigeons won't be able to swoop so low to disturb them while they're on their patio. She has also cut off her next door neighbour from the rest of the neighbourhood when before we could see each other over the gardens.

I really hate having conflict with my neighbours and I'm upset we're arguing because we haven't before, but I love having this as a hobby, and I'm not sure what I can do to to keep us both happy.