The starlings are like the Mafia of the bird world but I do enjoy watching them. We have robins and collared doves nesting in our trees. Both lovely birds.
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SubscribeI 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?
The starlings are like the Mafia of the bird world but I do enjoy watching them. We have robins and collared doves nesting in our trees. Both lovely birds.
Lots of long tailed tits here, among other tits on the fat balls and sunflower hearts. Robins are always around and I sometimes see a wren - always around but usually flitting about in the undergrowth.
A thrush often emerges from under a mass of choisya (sp?) for some dry porridge I sprinkle nearby for the ground feeders.
We often have great spotted woodpeckers, and lately the parakeets seem to have worked out how to manage a feeder we’d thought was parakeet proof.
There’s very often a queue of them waiting in a small tree near that particular feeder.
We get through masses of bird food - regular bulk deliveries organised by dh, who also fills up the feeders.
I saw a lovely male nuthatch the other day which I was pleased about. There were a lot of cats at this house before we moved here two years ago and it is taking a while for birds to come back. I am concerned about rats which I know are about so I am picking up the tray of ground feeding food overnight. On a happy note a bluetit was having a house viewing in the new bird box yesterday.
I've got a lovely 'pet' robin at the moment who comes every day to eat the mealworms I put out for him. That's if the wood-pigeons leave it alone.
But I must admit there is something magical about blackbirds to me.
Our neighbour had a problem with a rat which climbed up the cavity wall into her loft. She reckoned it was attracted to her garden by the bird food so we stopped feeding the birds for a while.
We now have two big 'poppy' feeders which we fill with meal worms. The blackbirds feed from them but I think they are too low for the bluetits.
The squirrels seem to ignore them but when I used to put fat balls out, one day I saw a squirrel trying to run along the top of the fence with a fat ball under his arm.
Same here vampirequeen.
I live behind a canal and we get all types of birds in the garden amongst other wildlife,including fallow deer who are beautifull.
But my favourite has to be the cheeky robins who sit on the bird bath and watch us and wait for food.
They aren`t a bit scared either.
Wrens, robins, dunnocks, goldcrests, treecreepers, magpies, jays,
Tawny owls. Never seen one but I hear them on many nights.
There's a very determined sparrowhawk around at the moment too. Yesterday MrB saw it chasing a crow. He didn't see the conclusion of the chase.
Not in the garden, but we can see eider ducks on the loch sometimes, and oystercatchers, curlews, herons. But my favourite loch bird to see is Little Grebe.
Mostly blackbirds. When I see them stuffing food down themselves I imagine how that will help them to survive to sing the best songs of all the birds.
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.
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.
I love long tailed tits, they are so vain
I love all the birds, tits, finches, blackbirds, sparrows then the geese and game and red kites, buzzards, sparrowhawks. We really do see them all
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 I must admit the birds have kept me going through this last year. They are so entertaining
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
aww the poor thing, he is so cute too
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.
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