Bird Watching in Deepest West Sussex From David Cole

So, just how much should we 'manage' the way that we react to the wildlife around us?

Who are the villains of the bird table?

Who should we encourage or discourage?

The trouble is that the Raptors also have to eat and feed their families just as much as the Blue Tits - who have become so friendly this year that they take food from the hand.

This has become an extended problem with the arrival at our garden of a youngish butterscotch coloured feral cat which has been seen feeding from bread on one of the flat platforms of the bird feeding station at the front of our house.

My wife, well known by the local wildlife as a very soft touch, has I notice placed a dish of milk under the hedge at the boundary - and the cat - slim and clean - has been using it. The hedgerow has numerous holes of varying sizes for the existing residents and the arrival of a major predator will have not gone unnoticed by the mice, shrews and even rats who make it their home.

The cats is, we think, from a nearby farm where noisy battles amongst the numerous unfed cats, which are tolerated for their vermin control activities mean that lone 'travellers' appear from time to time, having been evicted by the dominant felines. It has a battle-scar over one eye, but otherwise seems fit and well.

This is not always the case - some thirty years ago a large fat tabby appeared at our door on Christmas Day - shortly after a car stopped a short distance up the lane - it had been dumped to take its chances and was lucky enough to meet my wife - it lived for about seven years in a nearby barn - and in its later years it was well fed - by you know who...

So what do you do, the butterscotch one is just as much a creature of the wild now - he/she has to eat - just as much as the Sparrow Hawk who makes periodic strikes at our branch-defended bird tables - interfere - or just live with it?