Kitchen Garden Forum

With the mild winter there haven't been so many unusual birds visiting the garden so far.

We had our first Brambling yesterday and have had two Willow tits around for a few weeks. Last week we had an amusing visit from a Grey Wagtail. I had put a block of polystyrene in the pond to prevent it icing up (if we do get some cold weather) and a Grey Wagtail was using it as a raft and sailing round the pond on it in the gusty winds.

There are large numbers of all the usual visitors, blackbirds, chaffinch, blue tits, bull finches, and gold finches plus a few other tits and house sparrows and the resident robin and dunnock.

I should be glad we aren't having bad weather yet, but it does bring a lot more interesting birds in.

Nothing unusual at the moment but I'm always happy to see the amount of wrens we have about the place. The pair of Little Owls in the oak tree are calling well at night too.

MW

Our Niger feeders attract around 30 to 40 goldfinches at a time, at this time of year we occasionally spot one or two redpolls or siskins amongst them.

Over the last five years we noticed an absence of sparrows, this year we are pleased to see they are back in numbers.
Conversely the number of Starlings has dropped dramatically.

I do like that image of the grey wagtail 'sailing' round your pond, PP!

Our first bramblings arrived on 13 December, but only three so far (1m, 2f). Other birds on the sunflower hearts and home-made fat blocks include blue, great, coal and long-tailed tits, goldfinches (up to about 15), greenfinches (only two or three nowadays compared to dozens a few years back), chaffinches, nuthatch, bullfinch, robin, great spotted woodpecker and a recent surprise visitor, a tree sparrow which don't usually occur around here. Dunnocks and blackbirds clear up whatever falls down of the feeders.

I always smear some fat on the tree trunks near the feeders which is picked off by the treecreepers! Also in the garden, though not on the feeders, are goldcrest, wrens and the occasional wood pigeon and collar dove.

We do see quite a few house sparrows around but never on the feeders. And I do concur with Pa Snip: very very few starlings compared to 15, 20 years ago. Unfortunately, feral pigeons which we never used to see, now roam the area in groups of six or seven, trying to pick up any fallen food.

We do have a murmurration of starlings in the village, if I'm lucky I get to watch it when I'm waiting for the school bus to come in around 4.15pm. Not a large one by the standards of the ones you see on TV but beautiful to watch. They all drop into some big conifers.

The number of finches seems to depend on what crops have been around us during the year, they love the rape seed years!

MW

Well we have a foot of snow in the garden this morning and everything is here in large numbers. Even a few more brambling with over a dozen chaffinches.
I've pressed some suet into the cracks in the pear tree bark and put a good helping of the stored apples that are just about finished out so they should all be happy. Might have to top up the sunflower hearts too.

Apart from our now regular little family of goldfinches we haven,t seen anything rare yet. I think one can now discount the wild green parakeets which were once rare and are now common enough to visit every day, as well as the red kites overhead which on some days are more common than blackbirds
I was hoping for some redpolls but perhaps the weather isn,t bad enough for them yet. In any case, all our pyracantha berries have long since gone so they will be unlucky.

But we did have a sparrowhawk in the garden a few moments ago who caused chaos but is now sitting on the fence looking rather dejected having caught nothing.

There is only one bird I resent feeding, the damn Heron.
Its a pain to cover the pond but the damn thing sat on a rooftop watching me, almost as if it was trying to work out how it could beat me, as I laid out copious amounts of netting

A flock of 15 long tailed tits have just visited the feeders and it is almost dark.

Some behaviour I've never seen before was a blackbird eating sunflower hearts from the hanging feeder this morning. Probably showing off to impress the females.

We usually get a few redpoll with the goldfinches when the weather is bad. There were some a few weeks ago when we had a cold snap, so perhaps they will come back this week after a couple of cold days. I've not seen nuthatch for ages and they used to be regulars and the tree creeper and greater spotted woodpecker are occasional visitors. The heron has a fly-over to check the pond out early in a morning, but since it has eaten most of the fish - we only have one elderly goldfish and a large tench left in a very large pond - it doesn't usually bother coming down. We get one or two visits a week from the sparrow hawk at the moment but that was a real nuisance last winter when it sat in the tree waiting and made several attacks a day on the feeders. It even caught a greater spotted woodpecker.

Your observation about the long-tailed tits was interesting, PP. We have noticed that they often come to the feeder just as it is getting dark and are often the last birds of the day there. And always in a flock until they pair up in spring.

We also get the occasional heron visiting, but because we have no fish in our own pond nor in the much larger pond on the nature reserve in front of our house, they usually only turn up in spring when the frogs, toads and newts return to the ponds to spawn. But we do see a dipper regularly in the beck just below our house though not in our garden. Some years ago, their nest was in a drystone wall falling into the beck, so I am always hoping they will nest there again.

Not rare for many of you but we reckon it is 5 or 6 years since we have seen a Blackcap on our feeders.

Spotted one this heavily frosted morning making the most it could from the fatballs

The great spotted woodpecker is now drumming regularly! The days must be getting longer.

I wouldn't know a rare bird so I'll share what we have but I need help with those birds I raise from the long-grass or stubble when I walk the fields.

We have masses of blue tits, greenfinch, bullfinch and I think sparrow. We have woodpeckers, pheasant, crows, Jays, magpie, doves and starling. The occasional sparrow hawk and kite though I fancy the number of birds-of-prey are kept down by
the buzzards.

The birds I need help with live in the fields ajacent to us, they seem to live in the long grass in numbers. When I raise them they take off at speed with a twitter and very fast wing beats, could they be skylarks ? They do do that flying high routine that I thought was typical. We have them on all the farmland around us but they never come onto our paddock, probably the grass is too short.

The Redpoll are back this week, usually among a flock of Goldfinch, and the Song Thrush is singing nearby every morning.

Richard, the birds you describe could be skylarks (because you are near the sea, aren't you?That's where they go in winter), but they are probably more likely meadow pipits which are also in Britain all the year round and also tend to go nearer the coasts during winter.

Meadow pipits spiral upwards into the sky in summer and then 'float' down like on a parachute.

Skylarks tend to constantly twitter quite melodiously in the sky in summer.

We have seen two goldcrest in the garden recently, lovely to watch them probing into every little crack in the bark.