Action

I was trying to get action shots of the coal tit as he came in to the feeder.






The nuthatch then came along.




I snapped him as he left.


A few dunnocks were loitering.

Spring Equinox

The warmest day of the year so far. The car said it was 18 degrees. Very nice.
I have seen a pair of gold crests in the garden most days this week. They even came and fluttered about while I was in the garden stocking up the fat feeders.


The siskin numbers are very low now. I'm not sure there are half a dozen at any one time. Perhaps they have moved on, or someone else is feeding them good stuff.


This starling was sitting on next door's gutter most mornings. I thought he was a (big, fat) baby who wanted to join in with the other ones, as he would just sit there, cawing to them and shrugging his wings. But then he'd fly over to this telegraph pole and just sit there until he went back to the gutter. I'm sure his nest is there. Next door must have a good half dozen nests in his eaves and gutters.


I'm getting the jackdaws on my lawn more and more now.


The dunnock is usually seen on the other (out of sight) side of the garden, but he came to by the window today.

I got some lovely pics of a Mrs Blackbird.

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.

Saturday

The morning after the stock up the day before.

I was fully expecting loads and loads and loads of birds. But it seems less than normal.
I didn't see anything on the nyger feeder. I think it's because it's on the starlings' tree.
Also only a lone tit has been seen on the fat candle.

So I went out and rearranged a bit. I moved the fat cake to a tree the other side of the garden hopefully to encourage the starlings over there. I moved the nyger feeder onto the tree outside the window. That now has a total of 6 different feeders/foods on it. One great tit didn't know where to settle. The nyger has had one or two visitors including the greenfinch, but mostly a coal tit.

I did see the goldcrest a few times and also, after a lot of poring over books and pics, I now know the brown bird I've been seeing is a dunnock as he had grey "flashes" over his eyes and rather a nice pic of him too.









Mrs chaffinch is still a scaredy cat, especially when the starling chases her off.



I'd read that you should pack a bit of fat into the tree nooks and crannies for tree creepers and the like, so I scraped the fat candle up a few brances and trunks. The starlings love it and are scrapping over it. It was also a nice treat for the very bird who I put it there for, the tree creeper who visited at dusk and went the other side of the branch when I approached him.




Sightings today
starlings
great tit
coal tit
blue tit
3 long tailed tits

dunnock
robin
mr and mrs chaffinch
mr and mrs blackbird
gold crest
gold finch

tree creeper
wood pigeons



Not seen a nuthatch today though. They are usual visitors, so I don't know where they are today.



I'm sure this is the same bird as I was wondering about yesterday and is definately mrs blackbird






There were a few bugs on the window and I tried a macro shot of them. The camera seemed to zoom in on different bits each time. Well cool if I say so myself