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Ellendra wrote:If sparrows are a "rare bird", I'm sure we could send you some. They're a pest bird in the US, there's too many of them.

Ooops! I'm sure they are a different variety - and then they'd probably take over and kill off our last indigenous sparrows, like the grey squirrel is busy doing...

Sorry - of course I didn't mean the grey squirrel is killing off sparrows - well, you know what I mean.

Sparrows seem to be plentiful in Wales too, although for some reason no longer in England. When I was a kid in Sussex (a long time ago ) there were thousands of them.

we seem to have plenty of sparrows here.

Re Moles - Try catching them, its quite fun.

It can take a time to get it right, but as soon as that first one is caught its easy.

..How?

wait until the earth is moving, tip toe to the side of the hill, and with gloves on wait until it moves again- just dive in to the base of the hill and scoop everything up with one huge heave.

make sure you take the things miles away too

Try looking at this site:

http://www.britishmolecatchers.co.uk/

I considered going on a molecatching course at our local agricultural college, but decided not to - it was £400 - when I learned that I couldn't be taught how to set traps because of health and safety concerns (shown, but not taught), and that the poisons part of the course was now theory only because of difficulty sourcing the poisons post 9/11! Bloody hell, and they call that progress...

You could check out these - they're quite good against gophers I believe, just a noisier version of the child's windmill. You can buy them from Amazon UK.

Euphorbia Lathrys is supposed to help deter moles. I have the plant and no moles so maybe it's true .

Alternatively, listening to this might help

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljrGT-weS4



Wassail

Karen