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Science/nature/environment

Popular or favourite bird that visits your garden.

(61 Posts)
WOODMOUSE49 Fri 15-Jan-21 20:12:12

I stood at the door watching the birds on the feeders this morning. I'd filled the feeders up the day before.

I couldn't see the fat balls for all the long tailed tits. Maybe 7 at one time. They are such friendly, sociable birds. Our pet name for them are "lollypops" .

I wished I had my camera or phone handy for a photo.

What's your favourite garden visitor?

Greyduster Mon 22-Mar-21 19:05:04

Spotted a pair of blackcaps in the lane this morning. Definitely a sign of spring. They were probably looking for a nesting site. They have a lovely song but they were just twittering away quietly to each other this morning.

grandmajet Mon 22-Mar-21 15:24:12

We have blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits, goldfinches , a robin, blackbirds, magpies, rooks, wood pigeons, collared doves, as regular visitors. We used to get woodpeckers and pheasants but a local development has pinched their habitat. A sparrow hawk also sometimes swoops through.
My favourite however, which we’ve only seen a few times, is a little goldcap - so tiny! It bathed in our little pond last year and looked almost like a humming bird. Magical.

JaneJudge Mon 22-Mar-21 13:50:22

Also last week I had a pair of yellow hammers hanging around outside the kitchen. I have never seen them before. I do wonder if lockdown is bringing more birds out or maybe I am just noticing more.

JaneJudge Mon 22-Mar-21 13:49:01

Well, well, well for the first time in my life I heard a lapwing today!! There were four birds swooping around in the field at the back but the calling sounded like it was coming from something electronic, I have never heard anything like it in my life smile I searched on rspb when I got home and they were lapwings. Isn't nature wonderful? smile

MayBee70 Fri 19-Feb-21 13:16:28

I’ve hardly ever seen a Jay: probably only 2or three times in my life even though I live close to a wooded country park and my house is surrounded by trees.

Ro60 Fri 19-Feb-21 11:24:55

My favourite is a jay that I don't see very often but so uplifting when I do.
There is a robin that comes to visit if I'm sitting outside & hangs around for quite a while. I find myself talking to him?

Redhead56 Fri 19-Feb-21 11:10:30

I love all the birds don’t really have a favourite recently had a lone female blackcap. Her cap is pale red I don’t suppose it will be long before she has a mate. It’s an absolute joy watching them and when I can taking photos.

Susiewong65 Fri 19-Feb-21 11:06:37

We have a little flock of sparrows who visit the garden everyday.
They know when I put food out and are always very vocal and excited when I appear, they do make me smile as they are like a group of squabbling siblings.

They also nest every year in the corners of our house so we get to see the chicks being introduced to the garden as well.

This has gone on for years so goodness knows how many generations have passed through.

Mollygo Fri 19-Feb-21 11:06:03

We have a few bird visitors, but my favourites are the pied wagtails. They are so lively and quite noisy. We do have a pair of robins which appear 2-3 times a week, especially if I put mealworms in the feeder.

lovebeigecardigans1955 Fri 19-Feb-21 10:58:18

I rarely see birds in my present garden (the last one was a real haven) but in winter I often see a robin. I haven't noticed it lately though.

timetogo2016 Fri 19-Feb-21 10:53:33

I love them all,but i do have a soft spot for robins,we have a family of them who come very close to us when we sit in the garden.

JaneJudge Fri 19-Feb-21 10:36:57

aww the poor thing, he is so cute too smile

Greyduster Fri 19-Feb-21 10:35:36

Well, that’s a first, Granny23! Poor thing if he’s become the ugly duckling of the blackbird community. We had one last year with a white flash on one wing which looked a bit strange.

Granny23 Fri 19-Feb-21 10:19:15

I have a pair of wood pigeons who live in a tree in the garden and appear every morning when I go out to feed them, almost eating from my hand. Also a robin who lives in the hedge and has a mate at the moment + 1 wee wren who lives in the fence. Blackbirds, Thrushes, Jackdaw, not so many blue, long tailed & coal tits this year but instead, many sparrows which used to be rare visitors. I am pleased that since the tall trees immediately outside the back gate where felled, the noisy Rooks have moved further along the hillfoot path.

It has taken me a while to identify this year's newcomer- see pic- An Albino Blackbird - whom seems very lonely as the other Blackbirds either chase away or ignore him/her?

gulligranny Thu 18-Feb-21 22:27:26

We are visited several times a day by goldfinches - I can see exactly why the collective noun for them is a "charm", they are delightful. We also have several blackbirds, robins and wrens and a gang of big-boy jackdaws who love the fat balls and have perfected their perching manoeuvres in order to get at them.

MayBee70 Thu 18-Feb-21 22:18:00

We have a sparrow hawk that hides under the hedge next to the bird feeder. Thankfully she hasn’t been around recently. Hope she’s ok though.

Greyduster Thu 18-Feb-21 22:03:16

In the ordinary course, we don’t get many birds other than sparrows, wood pigeons and the odd blackbird, but this winter we have had a couple of thrushes too. My favourites, though, are the goldfinches that appear in the early spring. We also have a pair of visiting sparrowhawks, which is probably why we don’t get a lot of birds! Can’t help but admire them, I’m afraid! Those eyes!

Grandmafrench Thu 18-Feb-21 21:50:05

My favourite is the Thrush when it sits at the very top of a tree, facing the sunset and it goes through its entire repertoire of song while lit up in the fiery spotlight of the sun going down. Magical. I love our Robins, our adorable Black Redstarts which bounce up and down on garden chairs and shout at the cats and always nest over our porch. We currently have a huge cache of young starlings who have been relying on seeds we put out because the winter has been cold this year. They're total hooligans but very entertaining. I look forward to watching the Swifts and Swallows swooping and drinking from the pool on hot days and occasionally making me duck under the water when they fearlessly skim across the surface. And we have Collared Doves busy in the neighbours conifers.
Sunset any time of year sees huge skeins of birds going home to the bird sanctuaries local to us and occasionally a big swoosh of apricot as a flock of Flamingoes overflies our garden after a day's paddling in the Med'.
Amazing photo witzend.

Casdon Thu 18-Feb-21 21:45:48

I’m in the mountains, and when it’s very cold, particularly when there’s lying snow for a few days, we get birds of prey as well as the usual garden birds. A red kite nest is just down the road from me, so we see them every day, although on the wing rather than in the garden. I haven’t seen one in the garden this year, but we have had a buzzard visiting for a few days in a row. My son put out some stewing steak, which it was much more interested in than the small birds.

tidyskatemum Thu 18-Feb-21 21:28:02

Last year we had a robin with a bald head, I assume due to a mite infection or next door's cat had tried to chew it. It didn't seem to be bothered by its lack of feathers and neither did other robins as it got a mate and we were thrilled the day it brought a baby to the feeder. Sadly it seems to have bitten the dust but we've got a new resident robin. We are overrun with goldfinches, which sit swinging on the sunflower heart feeder for hours, though their style has been cramped lately by a sparrowhawk which finds them a very tasty morsel.

JaneJudge Thu 18-Feb-21 21:03:08

Oh Blossoming, we have woodpeckers too. We had a mum (or maybe dad) and a baby last year and it would obviously follow the baby so it could peck away at our birch tree and then it would call it back smile I must admit the birds have kept me going through this last year. They are so entertaining

JaneJudge Thu 18-Feb-21 21:01:19

I love long tailed tits, they are so vain grin

I love all the birds, tits, finches, blackbirds, sparrows smile then the geese and game and red kites, buzzards, sparrowhawks. We really do see them all

Blossoming Thu 18-Feb-21 20:51:52

This is my favourite visitor, taken last year.

MayBee70 Thu 18-Feb-21 19:15:44

I’ve recently joined a corridor appreciation group on Facebook as I’ve become fascinated by rooks and crows. Most people in it seem to be from America and they tell wonderful stories of the gifts their corvid friends bring them. I had a friend years ago who was an avid bird watcher and he told me his favourite birds were rooks. At the time it surprised me but I get it now. DD had a tiny puppy a couple of years ago and she was worried when it was in the garden as she started seeing buzzards sitting on her fence, but the crows or rooks actually chased them off. I’m envious of the Americans on the Facebook page as they have lots of ravens: something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the wild.

Eloethan Sat 16-Jan-21 11:55:19

It's odd but during a very short period in the year we see a jay but not for the rest of the year.

Also, one year we saw lots of little goldfinches on, I think, a small Christmas tree in the garden. They appeared for a few days and we have never seen them again.