Birds

[Blaze]

What we have seen, for the first time in 30 years, was a big orange slug (yuk) Climate change?

We had them in your department when we lived there (we moved here 8½ years ago) but it was a forested area. I often saw them on the roads and tracks and sometimes chez nous, as well as the other big grey-black slugs. Since being here by the sea, the only type of slug I've seen is the little one, and not many of them either. Lots of snails though, the big "edible" type and Cochlicella acuta, the small Pointed snail. They get into our letter bos and nibble the mail

[MAD87]

My potager in our last house (87380) was full of those big orange jobs...
Haven't seen a single slug in our current garden.

[Blaze]

Slugs have lots of natural predators, so if you have or haven't got them in your garden you may or may not have toads, hedgehogs, glow-worms (yes !), thrushes, slow worms, certain types of beetle ....
We have some of these (I regularly spy hedgehog poo which is great, and the dogs don't like it !)

[exile]

Also worth pointing out that many slugs are not especially destructive of your prized plants or seedlings and some even predate on those smaller slugs that are a real bother for the gardener. I tried to find out whether the big orange ones fell into that category but drew a blank - but based on their size I would hazard a guess that they need a lot more than a handful of your seedlings or dahlia stems to keep them slithering/sliding along.