Saturday 28 February 2009

Bouncing Blackbirds

Now I always thought that blackbirds were ground feeders as they only seemed to be on the ground under the tree nearest the house.
But recently I put this fat cake down the far corner of the garden and it seems to be popular with some birds.
Yesterday I saw a blackbird eyeing it up from underneath it. I saw him flying up and it looked like he was trying to land on the cage to eat but was missing every time. I wondered why he didn't approach from above like the other one, but on looking more closely through the binoculars, I could see that he was flying up to the base, taking a bite, then landing to swallow it. He didn't have a 100% success rate though.



You can just see the blur of him on this one


Later on I saw a female blackbird. She'd land on the cage, but because the cake was so small, it was difficult for her to reach down to bite it. I swapped it for a new cake, so she should get on better tomorrow.


My siskin numbers seem to have gone down recently, I've not been getting anywhere near the 20 birds I got recently. The starling numbers have gone up again after their cold weather dip.


I have a new bird sighting (although I think I saw him before but not since - until now). A wren. They have lovely eyebrows, haha.


My garden was quiet so I decided to spy on next door's hedge. There were two brown birds on the nut feeder there and I wondered if they were sparrows as I was sure they weren't dunnocks as I thought dunnocks were ground feeders. I checked my books and I was positive they weren't sparrows and when they sat on the branch in between stuffing their beaks I could see that they were actually dunnocks. I'm sure I'd only seen the one in my garden. Perhaps love is in the air.
Talking of "love in the air", the crows have been pairing up recently. It's lovely seeing them sat in pairs in the big tree.

We tidyied next door's garden today. Found a few big worms that I put on the bird table. I don't know if they got eaten by birds or leaped to relative safety, but they were soon gone.






5 comments:

ShySongbird said...

Hi JooMoo,

I too thought Blackbirds were principally ground feeders but the ones in our garden are cheeky chappies! Only this morning I saw two hanging on the fat cake and as for them clinging on to the small hanging feeders which are meant for the small birds well....!!

I saw a Wren briefly for the first time in ages recently. We get Dunnocks visiting regularly but unfortunately after the brief and unexpected appearance of Siskins around this time last year there has so far been no reappearance.

Steve said...

Definitely a male house sparrow on the right of that peanut feeder, Joo.

Joe said...

Hi Joomoo,

Great blog, I have just visited for the first time and have fully enjoyed browsing. I will definitely visit again in the future

swatson said...

like you Joomoo seen blackbirds flying up and pecking cakes in the wire baskets.Love the wren one of my favs
Sheila

joo said...

Steve - I think you are right. It was hard looking through binoculars and back to book and it didn't quite look like anything, so I was even looking to see if it was a different bird altogether. They need to come closer.

Joe - welcome and thank you for your kind words.