We moved the bird feeder last week and the visitors have been building up nicely. For some reason we never seemed to get many birds in the old location but within a few days we have had chaffinches, a robin, blue tits and great tits.

We have house sparrows, greenfinches and goldfinches around so I’m hoping we will see them before long. There are also dunnocks and a wren but they aren’t great visitors of bird feeders so they may not bother.

I’ve seen yellowhammers a couple of fields away and we get occasional visits from long-tailed tits. It would be good to see them visiting too. With my luck we’ll probably have a visit from a sparrowhawk.

They fly over on  a regular basis and we suspect that they have taken a number of young poultry over the years. One morning a female sparrowhawk emerged from a gateway as we drove along the road. She had a pigeon in her talons and was making heavy work of trying to carry it away, being unable to gain height with her burden. I’m not sure who was most surprised by the meeting.

We will set some time to one side on Monday for bird recording and see what comes. One of the group did well identifying birds when he visited a nature reserve last week so we want to maintain his enthusiasm. We might even get a photograph.

In the meantime here is a picture of a grouse from the moors on our break last week. It’s not the best photograph of a grouse ever taken, but it’s a start.