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What's this all about?

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Aka Sun 05-May-13 18:22:33

Spent the day in the garden but distracted by the 'dog fight' being acted out in the sky above me. Large(ish) bird of prey (buzzard?) flying over the gardens kept being attacked by a very irate male blackbird.
The blackbird was flying at the buzzard and they were fighting it out. At one point they disappeared into the cloud cover. Then the blackbird would reappear and sit at the top of tall conifer. When the buzzard reappeared he would make loud, angry cawing noises and head up to where it was and there would be another fight, this time they disappeared out of sight over the roof tops. Then the blackbird is back in the conifer, on guard, and when the buzzard comes into sight he attacks again.
This went on for hours. The bird of prey was twice the size of the blackbird, at least. What stamina that little bird had.

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NfkDumpling Mon 03-Jun-13 22:33:43

Buzzards mew, crows caw, and could chi-chi-pooey be a chiff chaff?

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NfkDumpling Mon 03-Jun-13 22:38:03

We got a free pair of binoculars from the National Trust Tegan. They weren't a lot of good.

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Elegran Tue 04-Jun-13 09:05:07

I've now seen my chi-chi-pooey bird and it is a blackbird. Maybe I transcribed it wrong - ti-ti-hooey might be nearer, or somewhere in between. It sings other bits, but that phrase was so distinctive I have been searching on it.

So now we know.

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Bags Tue 04-Jun-13 11:02:18

Blackbird song is lovely, isn't it, elegran? But for the first time in my life I'm willing to agree that the song thrush is well named. We have had a fabulous singer in our garden this spring. Saw some of the babies today too smile

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Elegran Tue 04-Jun-13 11:30:40

We used to have thrushes in the garden when we first moved here, but have not seen them for a while. They did a good job on the snails. You could find the evidence in the broken shells around the thrushes' dining table stone.

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NfkDumpling Tue 04-Jun-13 16:37:28

A blackbird? I thought with chi-chi-pooey it would be something really exotic! There's a blackbird around here that does a very convincing telephone ring tone. Most annoying!

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feetlebaum Wed 05-Jun-13 07:53:43

The blackbird is a member of the thrushes, isn't it? Thracidae?

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annodomini Wed 05-Jun-13 08:40:43

Back when trim phones were the fashion, there was a starling that imitated it so well, it often sent me running to answer it.

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