Tag Archives: bird feeders

Finches and Photographs

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Goldfinches on the feeder

It’s been a good week in the garden. We now have an established population of Goldfinches and when they aren’t on the feeders we can often hear them singing in the area. No wonder they were so popular as songbirds in Victorian times.

This morning we had a young one on the feeder, so they are even bringing the kids to meet us.  They are streaky and lack the facial markings of an adult.

Earlier in the week we had our first Greenfinch. They are grumpy-looking bird at the best of times and this one appeared to get even grumpier as it struggled to get out of the squirrel-proof feeder. They are bulkier than a Goldfinch and lack their dexterity. However, she (for I believe it is a female, judging by the plumage) seemed to get used to the feeder and was soon back in it.


Greenfinch struggling

Greenfinches have always been fairly common at previous feeding stations I have had but took a hit a few years ago after a virus swept through them.  That’s why we do a lot of feeder cleaning these days. Chaffinches were also affected, and despite them once being a very common bird we are yet to see one in the  garden.

I also had an acceptance. I had to wait a while for this one but it was worth it. I sent off nine submissions last month. All results are in now, seven successful, two not. Or, if you just count editors/magazines seven submissions and seven acceptances, as both the unsuccessful submissions were to magazines with editorial boards that accepted one of the forms I submitted but left another.

Even better,  two of the three haibun I had accepted had been rejected last month.  That’s what people say – rejection is only the opinion of one  editor on one particular day. However from seven out of nine to nought out of eight, is a very fine line. past performance is no guarantee of future success.

Greenfinch on the fence

I also got my new driving license today. The photograph takes years off me, as my beard is no longer white. It was definitely white when I took the picture. However, that’s the least of my worries, as I still look like a Balkan gangster. I wouldn’t mind if I looked like a high-level one, but I look like the sort of gangster who guards doors.

And finally, a Peacock butterfly sunning itself on the bungalow next door.

 

Blackcap!

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Blue Tit feeding on suet pellets

In our old garden we once had a winter visit from a Blackcap, though it was actually a female, so it had a reddish-brown cap. It is one of a number of species that is changing it’s behaviour and is expanding its range. They used to breed in UK then migrate to southern Europe. They still do, but birds from western Europe now migrate to the UK for winter as it is easier than their traditional migration into Africa, and because there is a ready supply of food to be had in our garden feeders.

I had been hoping to see one at our new feeders, particularly as my sister has a friend who gets them in her garden, which is only a few streets away. Today, Julia asked me about the identity of a bird she had seen on the feeder. It sounded like a Blackcap, but it also sounded like it could be a Coal Tit (which we have had before). Anyway, when I went through there was nothing to be seen. Eventually a small grey bird showed up and flitted about at the feeders – Coal Tit. From many positions the white nape is highly visible. This one, of course, did its best to keep the white flash hidden. They can be very annoying.

Great Tit on Garden Feeder

However, another black-headed grey bird appeared. It fluttered more than the tits and when it eventually showed itself properly, was definitely a male Blackcap. Normally the Great Tits bully other birds off the feeders, but they were content to perch and wait for the Blackcap, which has a reputation for being robust in defending its feeding space. It also fed extensively from all the feeders, trying fat balls, sunflower seeds and scraps from the ground feeder, where the tits tend to grab a seed, or beakful of fat and make for cover.

Of course, now that this has happened I don’t really have much to aim for. Have we, I wonder, peaked too soon?

Magpie foraging on mossy roof

These are a few of the new bird shots – the blurring of the Magpie (taken yesterday) is from the vertical blinds, which tend to get in the way.

 

 

New Year and I’m Already a Day Behind

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Yesterday I avoided the internet as I had pains in my shoulders. I still haven’t set up my workstation as I would like and shoulder pain is often a sign of this. During the day it spread into my arms, forearms, wrists and hands. With rest and a hot water bottle it had receded by bedtime and with a night’s rest I have pain in my left wrist so am attempting some typing. Of course, it may all be down to old age or arthritis, you never know. Maybe it was just my day for pains in the joints and the location was a red-herring.

Feeding tits at Budby Flash

I dismantled a bird feeder yesterday. It was empty and we have made a commitment to good feeder hygiene. Two screws to remove the bottom plate was fine, though I did feel they could have been more substantial.  Four perches to twist off – no problem. Getting the collars round the feeding holes was more tricky. Each pair is held together by a small screw. They aren’t good quality screws and I managed to mess one of the heads up, so it no longer works. I could drill out the broken one and replace it, but the metal is poor, accessibility is poor and my ability to carry out simple tasks has always been poor. Any tale I may tell of my adventures with tools often hinges round my lack of dexterity and leads on to a succession of misadventures.

I will find a way of cleaning without dismantling. It will be better in the long run. Meanwhile, the moral is clear – don’t buy medium-priced bird feeders. Anything that is medium-priced is simply a trap for the unwary. It looks like you are buying something good but you aren’t. You are just buying better paintwork at a higher price. The durability and efficiency stay the same.

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We always used to buy cheap feeders, and they worked. This time, as we want the garden to look nice, I went for better looking feeders, with the consequence of paying a higher price. Unfortunately, higher price translates to better looking rather than better quality. I really need to put some thought into future purchases.

The plan is to feed birds in an efficient and healthy manner. If the feeder can’t be cleaned properly, or falls apart, the plan has failed. It’s not quite as profound as Ruskin, but it’s still  lesson in life, even if it is delivered by bird feeders rather than a man with a serious Victorian beard.

Great Tit

Feed the Birds & Happy New Year to You All

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Squirrel in a bin – Clitheroe Castle

Today provided  a lesson in squirrel ingenuity as it dangled by its back feet to gorge on sunflower hearts. It is, as you have to remind yourself, all part of life’s rich pageant. I don’t actually mind feeding squirrels in moderation, but I do mind that they will spend the spring trying to break into nests and take the eggs and chicks.

I’m thinking that a little strategically placed chilli might make it move on to a neighbouring garden. This will allow nature to carry on, but save me money and allow the birds unrestricted access to the feeders.

The pigeon spent some time on the floor picking up spilled seed – one of things the squirrel is good at – there’s a constant fall of seed as it eats from the feeder. It was interesting to see, as we have a floor feeding station located near the feeder, which it seemed to ignore. Eventually it realised the feeder was there and cleared it. We don’t put much out on the ground so we don’t encourage rats, so it was good to see it cleared. The other birds I think of as ground feeders (robins, dunnocks and blackbirds) are either trying their luck on the hanging feeders or picking up from the spillage. Something else to consider.

Grey Squirrel

My sister is coming round for New Year and I am thinking of ideas for snacks. The subject of cheese and pineapple came up. Then pineapple on pizza. I’ve never understood why people get so worked up about pineapple on pizza. It’s not like pizza hasn’t already been made to suffer a vast number of indignities. I like it. I also think anything that gets more fruit and more variety in the average diet is a good thing.

So I ordered pineapple on the weekly shopping. I also ordered cocktail sticks and a block of moderately priced cheese. The cocktail sticks, I was told, were unavailable. Then the cheese became unavailable. I was able to reorder slightly different ones. They became unavailable. I currently have kebab skewers coming and will use cheese I already have. What was going to the that childhood favourite – cheese and pineapple on sticks – has become cheese and pineapple kebabs. I assume that New Year is a busy time for purveyors of cocktail sticks.

Squirrel at Rufford

In fiction they have all sorts of food problems, including cannibalism, but you very rarely seem to see a plot that hinges on the availability of cocktail sticks.

Time to go now. I may be busy tomorrow, so Happy New Year to you all.

The squirrel in the bin – Clitheroe

Sweet Potatoes, Pasties and Peas

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Great White Egret

We had a flock of tits pass by this afternoon, spending some time taking sunflower hearts from the feeder. A few took suet pellets, a few had a go at the fat balls. Nothing showed any interest in the nyger seed. In the past we have attracted a lot of birds – mainly goldfinches – with nyger seed so we will persist.

The passing flock was approximately six Great Tits, four Blue, two Coal Tits and a solitary Long-Tailed tit. It was nice to see, and the Coal Tit is another species for the list. They are lovely little birds. Meanwhile, the robins are still posturing. I may try another feeder at the far end of the garden to see if they can both feed.

Little Egret at Aldeburgh

I made crispy sweet potato fries today, as the recipes call them. They weren’t crispy, though they were close, and they weren’t fried. They were baked at 200° C and they were better than the usual floppy rubbish you get served when eating out, or when using frozen ones. We had them with cheese and onion pasties, red cabbage (yes, we have had plenty of that once I remembered it) and mange tout peas with mint.

I’m beginning to enjoy cooking again.  Julia bought me a gingerbread kit and ingredients for Christmas and my sister bought me books of scone and afternoon tea recipes. The only thing that worries me is the expanding waistline.

Little Egret – Blacktoft Sands

It’s likely to be sweet potato soup tomorrow, using all the inconvenient off-cuts. They need to be roughly regular in shape to avoid burning all the thin and/or pointy bits. Crisp is good, burnt is less good.

Pictures are egrets. As a result of global warming they are becoming quite common in the east and midlands. It’s nice to see them, but I have mixed feelings about their spread.

Numbers, Ornithology and a Senior Moment

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Robin at Clumber, Nottinghamshire

Sorry, I really did mean to become more regular, and to get round and wish everyone the compliments of the season before it happened. As usual, me and my good intentions didn’t quite gel. So I hope you all had a good Christmas, and go on to have a great New Year.

I just noticed that my last post was my 3,500th. As you know, this has no real significance, but I always like to see a round number.  3,500 is so much better than 3,499, and also better than 3,501, despite being a smaller number. It’s a minor achievement on my way through life, so I won’t mention it again. Other people have written more. Some people have posted fewer times and managed a much higher quality. Some are much more regular and disciplined. That’s life. We’re all different. Some of us, for instance, take childish pleasure in round numbers.

The reason I used bird photos yesterday, as you probably guessed, was because we have started feeding the birds in the new garden. So far it has been a bit quiet, but it is showing signs of building up.

So far (this is now the fifth day) we have had blue tits, robins, great tits, long-tailed tits, dunnock, blackbird and pigeon. The pigeon can’t work out how to get at the food. We have also had magpies, but they haven’t yet attempted to feed.

Robin at Arnot Hill Park

It will take a while for the visits to build up, then I will start complaining about the amount they eat. At the moment the weather is mild, there seems to be plenty of food about and I imagine that most people round here have feeders so there won’t be a shortage of bird food.

The robins met whilst hopping along the back wall. One started posturing. The other, which I believe is the current owner of the territory, puffed up to double in size and the interloper flew off. You see all sorts of things when you are washing up.

We had frozen vegetarian nut roast for Christmas dinner, as my sister came round. It’s easier for us to become temporary vegetarians than it is to force-feed her meat. I prepared red cabbage with apple and onion and Christmas spices the day before then did potatoes. carrots, parsnips, sprouts and leeks on the day, using a list of timings as a guide. The potatoes, which I did properly (par boiled, knock the edges about, hot oil etc) turned out well. The gravy, which came with the nut roast, was not so good. The sachets, which I heated up with the carrots, both split and released the gravy. Fortunately we were able to make an alternative vegetarian gravy.

Then, twenty minutes after the meal was over, it struck me. I had forgotten to reheat the red cabbage. Senior moment alert . . .

Robin, Arnot Hill Park

 

Old times, new developments

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After a leisurely breakfast we dropped off some dry cleaning and went to have two new tyres fitted. Including tracking it cost me £270, which is more than I’ve paid for some of my cars. After that it was off to Men in Sheds to drop off birthday cards and then on to Rufford Abbey, where I failed to capture photos of Wrens, Nuthatches, Marsh Tits and a Kingfisher.

Just a few shots for now, showing the guinea fowl enjoying themselves in the sun, the new bird feeders being made by Men in Sheds and the kitchen extension.

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The guinea fowl seem unaware that they should be staying inside to avoid bird flu, the bird feeders may never be filled (there has been no feeding done since we left) and the kitchen extension has meant that the pizza oven and barbecue have been demolished.

Such is life.

Birds in Sherwood Forest

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These are the bird photos from the trip to photograph the oaks in Sherwood Forest. It was a bit dull and the birds were quick (unlike the oaks) so they aren’t quite as sharp as I’d like. I missed a couple of Coal Tits that came down to feed, plus Blackbirds, Chaffinches and Dunnocks that lurked in the undergrowth. There were two pigeons too, but I ignored them as I don’t want to encourage them to steal food from small, cute birds.

Great Tit on feeder – Sherwood Forest
Blue Tit on feeder – Sherwood Forest
Nuthatch – Sherwood Forest
Long Tailed Tit – Sherwood Forest
Nuthatch – Sherwood Forest

It’s a lot better than Rufford from that point of virw, as there are more pigeons there, plus a lot of gulls which can polish off a handful of sunflower hearts like magic.

I filled three feeders in the car park and heard a clattering behind me, as birds started feeding before I’d got out of the way.

I need to work out a better way of doing this. Do I just fill one so I can stay focussed on it all the time, or do I fill six so they don’t chase each other away all the time? Even with six there were probably enough Great Tits to chase everything else off.

They were changing places so fast that once I pressed the button to take a Great Tit and ended up with a picture of a Nuthatch!  OK, my frozen fingers were moving quite slowly, which would have helped.

Marsh Tit in Sherwood Forest
Robin of Sherwood
Squirrel stealing bird food

I presume the cold was one of the reasons they were feeding so eagerly.

 

Tuppence a bag

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If you’re familiar with Mary Poppins, you will probably recognise this quote from the song Feed the Birds. If you aren’t familiar with Mary Poppins then you won’t recognise it. At that point I’m not sure what to say. It’s not really my place to comment on your lack of cultural education, but if you get a chance to watch the film over Christmas, I hope you will do so. Apart from the more traditional aspects of Christmas, it is the season to watch films you wouldn’t normally watch during the rest of the year. It’s a Wonderful Life, Muppet Christmas Carol and The Great Escape – there’s an amnesty on watching films that have no place in the other 11 months of the year.

Anyway – from films to feeding birds.

When we arrived we had fieldfares on the verges. They flew into the hedges, startled by the car, and then flew into the field as I tried to get the camera trained on them. Most of the feeders were empty, as we hadn’t filled them since Wednesday. The large feeder still had food in it – the linseed and sunflower seeds from the mouse-infested bin. They hadn’t left it all, but they had definitely slowed down when they got to it, so I’m guessing that the smell of mouse urine puts birds off. It certainly puts me off.

The other problem food was the feeder with the rapeseed, which came from a sample we’d been given for Open Farm Sunday. It had been in the mouse bin but had been in a closed packet so didn’t smell. I’m wondering if there’s something about rapeseed that mice and birds don’t like.

Actually, there was a third problem – ice, cold and plastic water trays don’t mix. In other words, we broke the water dishes as we tried to get the ice out. Fortunately there are puddles to provide water (which made for an interesting few minutes of ice-breaking as we wondered who would be the first to fall over) and the birds have never used the water trays much anyway.

There wasn’t much action on the feeders, despite them being washed and filled with fresh seed.

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Dunnock and rosehips

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Blackbird at the Ecocentre

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Bullfinch at Screveton

I was particulalrly pleased to get the bullfinch, even though it’s a female blending in with the cover, because I heard the call behind me and was able to spot her in the hedge. It’s my first bullfinch photo, and the first time I’ve seen one so close to the centre – they are normally in the hedges up the lane.

The blackbird is one of our normal family with a few white feathers. I don’t know if the white feathers come back in the same place after moulting – if they do this must be a new generation as last year’s male had white in the wings.

 

 

 

Black, White and Orange

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No, it’s not a post about post-Brexit sorting of foreigners, it’s a post about me trying to find an inexpensive bird food.

I was tempted to say “cheap” but it was just a bit simple, so I thought I would wait and see if a better chance for a pun presented itself.

It could be subtitled: “A Confession Regarding Lentils”

Several articles have told me that birds will eat uncooked lentils. I eat uncooked lentils, because I can’t help it when I’m cooking – I just like the crunch. They are reasonably priced and you can get them from the supermarket, which is more than you can say for nyger seed.

So I spent £15 on a bird feeder with three chambers. I could just have bought three cheap feeders for about £7, but I had to show off…

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The first picture shows the feeder full, and I feel it looks quite good.

The second shot shows the feeder next day, with two thirds of the sunflower hearts gone, and a third of the black sunflower gone.

So, sunflower hearts are a very popular bird food – I think we knew that. And the black ones aren’t quite so good, but still popular. I think we knew that too. But birds don’t like uncooked lentils. I’m pretty sure that I could have guessed that too. It just seemed wrong, and with my birds, in June, nothing ate the lentils, even when they were the only choice. I left the feeder hanging with just the lentils in. Nobody ate them, they just ate peanuts and nyger.

So, cheap food doesn’t pay, don’t believe all you read in books and you don’t need flashy feeders.

I should have known it was too good to be true.

😉