Garden Snail ( Cornu aspersum )

A combination of a dry day and my hand feeling OK I ventured out to do some gardening.  Gloves were of course the order of the day as I still have part of a finger bandaged.  The buddleia should have been pruned a bit earlier than this  so that had to be the job I tackled.  Not only did I get the job done we dropped off the prunings at the recycling centre.

To make moving the pruning easier I laid out a groundsheet to put them on then they could be rolled up and popped in the car.  As I put a handful of branches down I spotted this fellow making a dash for it.  Most people wouldn't be keen on having snails in the garden, however we have a pair of thrushes and they like snails.  I also won't use pellets as the slugs and snails that eat the pellets are then eaten by hedgehogs and other insectivorous small furry animals.

Man is causing so much damage to the natural world I heard recently of a study that had shown 400 micro plastics per gram, ( yes per gram that is 1/28 of an ounce) of lung tissue in birds.  I wonder what humans bodies are like for micro plastics.