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.

New Visitors

I had a new visitor today, and with the help of the lovely people at the GBS forum, I've identified it as a wren. I thought it was one due to it's tail, but it seemed to be very brown rather than the speckly borwn in all my books.

I also spotted my first wood pigeon. I assume they have been here for ever since I often heard them, but it's the first time I've noticed him and, boy, is he a fat bird. (Rubbish pic, I know)

And I also needed help in double checking that this is a crow.

Haha, I snapped the robin before he saw me and flew off

I took my 2 main feeders down to clean and put them back up the other way round. I'd also moved the tray onto the nyger feeder. However, the siskins and goldfinches have stayed away from it. First off, I thought that it was because it was too near the window, but when I swapped them around, they still didn't want to use the nyger feeder. If none has gone by tomorrow, I shall have to take the tray off. I have ordered a taller nyger feeder and tray, so perhaps they'll not mind that.

The collard dove was dive bombing onto the grass and scattering the smaller birds.

And I snapped this nice shot of a coal tit.