Kitchen Garden Forum

My partner also saw a Goldcrest in our garden yesterday but I missed it.

I was thinking the same as you Monika about the skylarks and meadow pipits.

We never see the skylarks here in winter.

Did you see the ring necked parakeet reported at Potteric Carr nature reserve on Look North tonight? I know they are quite common around London, but not up here.

Himself has just spotted a bird that looked like a thrush but with a white neck warming itself on our kitchen skylight (8.30pm), any ideas?

MW

Monika wrote:Richard, the birds you describe could be skylarks (because you are near the sea, aren't you?

Thanks Monika, I'll get my book out to look at meadow pippit because these birds are with us all year round and yes I have the sea around me on three sides and as close as a mile away on the SW aspect. I only ever see these birds on the S and SW fields that would be closest to the sea.

Our thrush and blackbirds are loving digging into the mulch I put around the sea buckthorne and they have a piece of favourite grass for worming at the back of the barn. This was Molly toilet area so got lots of nitrogen and whilst it did burn a lot of patches when the grass recovered it would grow three times the speed of my other domestic grasses and that isn't an exadgeration.

MW, it really sounds like a ring ouzel. They nest in upland areas (we used to have them here at the edge of the moor, but I have not seen any for the last few years). They are only summer birds in this country. but very occasionally some stay behind, and with the mild winter so far and the place where you live, it really could be a ring ouzel. Do google it - the RSPB site is particularly good.

Brambling numbers have now increased to more than a dozen and today we also had two redpolls on the sunflower hearts - lovely to see.

I used to be a bit jealous of your sightings but I have Sparrows & Starlings on my feeder with the occasional Robin & Finch of one sort of another. I'm very happy to see the Starlings as their numbers are dropping & the Sparrows are also in a bit of bother!

I am happy with these wee birds & hope I am making a difference! Told the new neighbor not to seal up the tiles on his garage as sparrows love the shared accommodation it provides at nesting time & he immediately agreed so sharing the message! Only problem was the school behind cutting down the trees & closing off their nature bit as urban foxes took it over but it is fox free now so expect less kill of my wee ones!

Westi

The snow has encouraged large flocks of Gold finches and Redpoll to come into the garden this week and they have been enjoying the Evening Primrose and Lavender seeds that I left on. I was tempted to cut the seed heads off in autumn to tidy the plants up but am glad that I didn't.

We have a large "wild patch" in our garden, immediately adjacent to the public footpath and it really does look "untidy" over winter, but we leave it like that, with all the seedheads on, to encourage the wildlife. Then, about late February, we cut off the taller stems and fly-mow the entire area, ready for new growth. Every autumn I am tempted to 'tidy' the area but am glad that we didn't!

Today we had a magnificent male pheasant visitor.

Just enjoyed a close-up view of a goldcrest hovering from herb to herb in the pots by my back door. May not be rare, but it's the first I've spotted for over ten years. What a tiny agile creature, acting almost like a humming bird. A rare pleasure on a cold morning.

We only get the common birds ,sparrows,blackbirds, robin,starlings, the occasional blue tit nothing much else apart from herons and pigeons, the herons have emptied my pond 3 times in the last few years if the fish are to big to swallow they leave them at the side of the pond to die, when we had industry and smoking chimneys every bird was black anything that had wings where called shepies now as our atmosphere is cleaning up the birds are starting to get colours ,not much fun living in the industrial north

A pair of Jays are visiting lately,Goldfinches,Blue Tits are more visible these days too.

We started putting the bird feeders out at the end of October and the birds immediately discovered them. The most numerous at the moment are the goldfinches, accompanied by greenfinches, chaffinches, occasional bullfinch, nuthatch and great spotted woodpecker and all the resident tits: blue, great, coal and long-tailed. The robin and treecreeper hoover up anything that falls on the ground or in the cracks of the multi-branched tree where the feeders are. Unfortunately, starlings have just discovered the fat blocks and, in spite of them being surrounded by a 'cage', the birds just shove their beaks through and demolish a block in half a day!
My OH thinks I am 'speciest' for liking the starlings, but they are so terribly greedy!

A sparrowhawk is a regular visitor, too, but I have not seen him/her catching anything yet. No bramblings yet!

It's been a really good week with the bad weather bringing large numbers of lovely birds. We've also had a gold crest Alan and it's the first I've seen for ages. We've also had Jays, bullfinches, tree creeper and nuthatch, large numbers of all the other finches, 19 long tailed tits yesterday afternoon and something I've never seen before - a blue tit with a completely white head. We get about 16 species every day in winter with quite a few more in really bad weather. Oh and the song thrush has made its first visit for a long time.

We have been bombed out by wild green parakeets trying to get food from the bird feeders since the cold spell started on Friday.
We see and hear flocks of them noisily flying overhead all the time but they only seem to come down to feed in our garden when the weather gets colder.

To think that some years ago when I first spotted one feeding in the garden I actually phoned our village police station to report it because I thought somebody's pet parrot had escaped
Now we no longer have a village police station and the parakeets are more common than thrushes. How things change!

Ahh Primrose, the story I could tell that involves your old village police station

As for the parakeets, you have them, a certain great park has them, both of which are not far from us and yet we still only see the odd one now and again.