Tag Archives: bird feeding

A New Bird for the Garden

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Green Woodpecker – previous residents had them in the garden but we have only seen them in the trees next to us. So near, yet so far.

The big news of the day is that we had a Greater Spotted Woodpecker on the peanut feeder today. based on previous experience we are hoping this may become regular and I may actually get a photograph. By the time I had got the camera, put a card in (I’d been using it for working on a coin article) and got back to the window, it had gone.

It was, at least, there longer than the parakeet, and being able to access the food, should have been happy. The woodpecker was a regular visitor to the feeders on the farm and is not a problem to other birds. We were talking about how to extend the variety of birds that visit and we have decided that we don’t know.

We tried pasta. They threw it all over the lawn. we tried white rice (recommended by many people) they turned their noses up at it. We try fruit. The squirrels like it. It seems that white bread is the only thing they like apart from seeds, peanuts and fat based foods. And mealworms. It’s just that we don’t particularly like feeding mealworms. They need soaking before serving and you don’t always feel like soaking dried mealworms at 7am.

GReat Spotted Woodpecker on a feeder on the farm

We are keeping our fingers crossed for something interesting on 23-25 January, the weekend of the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. You can also do it in small gardens or, in fact, anywhere. So far 265, 725 people have signed up. One year we did it at my Mum and Dad’s house with the kids and turned up to find three jays in the garden. We’ve only had jays here twice in a year so I doubt that will happen. I also, in Nottingham, spent ten minutes waiting as  a Sparrowhawk perched on next door’s chimney and resisted the temptation to fly into our garden.

I have suggested putting cat food down to tempt the kites but Julia has vetoed the idea. It would scare the others, it makes them easier to poison (assuming you would want to) and it is, she says, cheating. I agree with the last one, as it will skew the records, but that’s just how I am – fair-minded and under the thumb of my wife.

This was going to be a post about daily word targets but it seems to have been derailed. Maybe later . . .

Great Spotted Woodpecker – and an admission that I should have labelled my photos better.

Birds, Blood and Butterflies

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Green Woodpecker feeding on ants

Julia walked out of the back door this afternoon with a jug of water to refill the bird bath. As she did, she disturbed a Green Woodpecker, which was foraging on the arid, tussocky wasteland we call a lawn.

When my parents lived here they saw one in the garden too, but they aren’t a species known for liking gardens and I had resigned myself to never being able to record one for the BTO Survey. We do have them nearby, in the belt of trees about 20 yards from the house, and we have seen them a couple of times (and heard them frequently), but, as I say, they don’t often visit gardens. Having said that, they are on the BTO list of commonly seen garden birds.

We could, if Julia hadn’t gone out with the water, have missed it completely. It is the 22nd species of bird we have seen in the garden since we moved in. I’m sure there are people with more impressive totals, but I’m quite impressed. It was a slow start and it needs some work to improve it a s a wildlife garden, so I am happy so far.

Kites fly over (we aren’t allowed to count them unless they land), there are sparrowhawks about in the area and there must be chaffinches and sparrows (someone has sparrows on their feeders about quarter of a mile away).  We’ve also had parakeets flying over. I’m hoping that with time we may eventually persuade them to land and allow us to record a few more types.

Green Woodpecker feeding on the floor

We had a cat yesterday, which is a new one for the Mammals list. This is not such an impressive list – Grey Squirrel, Brown Rat, Rabbit, Domestic Cat. It looks well fed so we are hoping it won’t do too much damage.

We also have ten species of butterfly recorded. I can definitely get a few more in with some extra planting.

We’ve also eaten our own beans, courgettes, tomatoes and rhubarb, which isn’t bad for a few pots. I had intended doing more, but I’ve had a very lazy year. We’ve also had some figs from a tree at Nene Valley Railway and one damson from our own tree. It seems not to have appreciated the move. Julia has also made Lavender bags from our Lavender, and is currently selling them to help with funding the cafe.

I had a blood test this morning and am still waiting for the result (it’s the one for the Warfarin, where they usually ring back in the afternoon. It’s getting a bit late, but I am trying not to worry.  The new surgery seems nice – it’s clean and the staff are friendly. The nurse was a bit stand-offish, but they often are. I imagine she will soon start telling me off for not looking after myself. Unfortunately, the impending phone call means I have to carry my phone about, and that, in turn, means that I will carelessly leave it somewhere random as I move around the house.  I will be back again on Friday – different blood test for different specialist. I am, so far, giving it an 8 out of 10.

Later, checking my emails, I am told the blood test result is not in.  Ah well . . .

Green Woodpecker shots are some I took on the farm.

Greenfinch

Some Thoughts on Garden Birds

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I took 52 photographs this morning. Many of them are faulty, most of them are uninspired, and several are already slowly pixelating in the bin. I didn’t stop to plan, just grabbed the camera and started shooting whilst cooking breakfast.

Over the last few weeks I have been thinking that the only way to improve my photography is to take more pictures, so today, I just switched on and pointe. I am a bit rusty but I will improve.

Even if I don’t improve I’m bound to get some good shots just by accident. And that, more or less, is what happened. The dunnock is quite good, the blackbird and pigeon are OK. The magpie looks blind, but I wanted it because it shows the sheen of blue and green on the black. And the ubiquitous squirrel looks much the same as all the other pictures of squirrels gorging on sunflower seeds. Both carrion crow shots were blurred, and the final shot of that sequence was just a patch of grass.

Meanwhile, as I cooked, I missed shots of robins, blue tits and great tits. I have others, but it would have been nice to get a more complete set of pictures.

Ornithologically speaking, we have a dull garden. The BTO listing of my reports so far show we have had 17 species in the garden, some only once. This will rise to 18 species after my next report as we had our first carrion crow this week.

We had more species when we fed on the farm, but that’s to be expected when you are next to farmland.  However, a problem we also had there was the feeders being taken over by jackdaws at times. Mostly they just fed in the chicken field but we often had mass attacks that shut everything out of the feeders. We got round that by feeding fat balls (their favourite) on the far side of the building.

So far we’ve had a few visits from jackdaws but only a small number at a time. They have only visited us in two of the last 11 weeks. Same for starlings – often a pest species – only seen in four weeks of the eleven, and usually just one bird.

When you think my mother used to throw some bread, a few seeds and some scraps out on top of a wall, and regularly attract twenty or thirty finches and tits, I feel like we are putting on a poor show. However, when you look at the way bird populations have plummeted over the last fifty years, we are lucky to get any. Thirty six years ago when I moved to Nottingham, I regularly had song thrushes and sparrows in the garden. It must be thirty years since I last saw a song thrush in a garden, and in fact they are rare anywhere these days.

There’s a very good statistical analysis here, which shows that song thrushes have declined by 47% since 1970. That’s only one view. In my garden they declined by 100% just over 30 years ago. The rate of decline obviously varies depending on the factor causing it – disease, farming practices, climate change, conditions in places where they migrate to, European idiots with shotguns – and some are even increasing (blackcaps and red kites being two examples).

Anyway, whatever is happening I am trying to help out with extra food, even if they don’t always appreciate it.

 

 

Kite!

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Robin in the sun

I like Nottingham, and our old house has a lot going for it, including many memories. However, I have to admit that I no longer like staying there – I prefer the heating and the one floor convenience of the bungalow. I also like Peterborough. It’s not much of a town and it often ranks low in surveys, but it feels comfortable to be back. Nottingham has far more facilities, but I didn’t really use them much. There’s no point in swimming pools, theatres and big shopping centres if you don’t use them.

One of the unexpected pleasures of coming back to Peterborough is going back to the Military History Group. Although it’s nearly 40 years since I went to a meeting there’s something familiar and comforting about it.

Male Blackcap eating from floor feeder

So it was good to get back. We collected the bird food that I ordered to the wrong address, and put out peanuts and mealworms. The mealworms have been popular, the peanuts have mostly been ignored. This was a surprise as they have been popular in the past. Maybe the birds just need a day or two to get used to them.

The header picture is one I took this morning out of the kitchen window. I’ve never been able to take a picture of a kite from my kitchen before. I have seen buzzards from the back windows at Nottingham, but they are quite a way distant, as they tend to hunt over the golf course. Sadly, my picture lacks context, but by the time I got the camera into action I couldn’t get house roofs and the kite in the same shot.

Male Blackcap eating sunflower hearts

We saw a different black cap a couple of times this morning – one with a chestnut brown head – a female. Julia saw her with the male and then I saw her on her own later. Although we aren’t getting many birds, and although we seem to be offering food they don’t eat  (which can be adjusted as we go on), things seem to be going quite well.

Magpies on neighbour’s roof

Kite, almost over the garden

Standing by the Sink

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Today I have been going through a plastic box containing odds and ends of spices. You know the sort of thing – the ones you used once for a specific recipe, or the ones you bought because you forgot that you already had some in the plastic box of spices you hardly ever think about. That’s why I have two lots of juniper berries and a jar of star anise.

I’m now in a quandary. Do I use them, even though they may have lost their flavour, to spice up a stew, or do I just cut my losses and throw them out? What I have done in the past is to find a recipe that uses some of them and then buy extra spices because the recipe needs them. At least I have learned to avoid that trap. That’s why recipes demanding nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger end up with mixed spice and black pepper. It’s not, I admit, the same, but it’s an attempt.

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

The good news is that I now have a number of useful jars to put things in.  Unfortunately I lack a selection of things to put in jars. Given time, I’m sure I can find some.

This is, of course, a well-known marketing trick. Mr Colman, of Colman’s Mustard used to say that he made his money from the mustard that people left on the side of their plate.

While I was washing up I was able to see a number of birds on the feeder, though a lot of time was taken up with the Big Squirrel. He struts round like he owns the place, but I have plans for him. Some of them involve the mixture of spices I have found in the bottom of the various jars I mentioned above. They may not be strong enough, or reliable enough,  for cookery, but I’m sure they are still pungent enough to disturb an animal with an acute sense of smell.

Squirrel in MENCAP gardens, Wilford

Planning

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Peacock on crocus

Today, I messed round on the fringes of poetry. I am no closer to submitting the December poetry than I was a couple of days ago. However, it is familiar territory and nothing to worry about. It is not a matter of life and death. Tomorrow I will make a decision on whether I submit or leave it. I prefer to make a decision rather than just let it drift. Then I must get next year set out, listing all my planned submission dates.

I did, however, do two short articles on medallions for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire Facebook page. It’s not great literature, and doesn’t solve any mysteries, but it keeps me out of mischief and keeps my mind engaged.

Crocus at Nottingham

Today, apart from this, was uneventful. We had brunch (which included leftover sweet potato fries) and an evening meal consisting of a ham sandwich with a variety of leftovers – including frozen chicken nuggets left over from Christmas Eve and various wrinkly salad items. These two meals allowed us to feel like we were cutting back, and still left time to eat shortbread biscuits.

The sunflower seeds in the garden feeder are going down at a satisfactory pace and the fat balls are showing signs of avian attention. The nyger seed, however, remains untouched. We will probably use it to mix in with other things at a later date. My plan is to replace it with a peanut feeder. I think we have an old one hanging about, and peanuts seem to be an attractive food. Meanwhile, I have plans to plant teasel and sunflowers in the garden to provide natural food. We also need some more berry-producing shrubs.

Daffodils

When mum and dad moved into the bungalow, I produced a planting scheme which allowed for cover, security, bird food and year round interest. Their gardener (they had him for years at three different houses) removed most of my shrubs and substituted the normal boring mix he always relied on. They have a variety of shrubs but nothing with spines or berries. I’m going to start making changes, but you should always spend a year in a garden before you start work on major things.

Daffodils

My first project will be to check for the presence of bulbs, once the flowers start. I’m fairly sure that I will be able to get some snowdrops in, if nothing else. After that, it will be a question of waiting for autumn to plant more bulbs. Bulbs, like me, are simple things. I really should have planted some pots of bulbs in the autumn, but there was so much to do it escaped me.

Irises at Wilford

A very strange day

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Time marches on.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The day started with a visit to the farm – we are still tidying up as we had an enforced rest over Christmas due to my infection – and continued with a visit to Men in Sheds. They made us tea and offered to share their Lincolnshire sausages. We declined the offer, but donated half a dozen pullet eggs from the bantams, who seem to have sprung into laying action while we’ve been away.

LIncolnshire sausages
Frying sausages
Adjusting the lathe

On the way home we dropped in to feed the ducks at Rufford Abbey, which was the fun part of the day, and pottered home as the light faded. That was where we got our big surprise.

Julia opened her emails and was rendered speechless.

It’s quite strange seeing Julia speechless. she impersonates a goldfish and emits tiny mewing sounds.

I waited patiently, and after she recovered the power of speech she read the email to me.

When I recovered the power of speech she told me off for using bad language.

It seems that one of the teachers who has been visiting the farm has arranged to rent land on the farm to start a group using horticulture and animals for therapy. Sounds vaguely familiar. Also seems like it must have been organised during the time we were being thrown out.

What really stopped us speaking though, were the words “As I understand it, the timing was right for change for all of us”. The timing, as you may recall from previous posts, was not right for us, but was forced on us. However, it seems to be a growing belief within the farmer that he did us a favour as we were working hard and not making a living from the project. That, of course, makes him feel better at throwing the group out. It also highlights the difference in our approaches, as we don’t need a lot of money if we’re doing something worthwhile.

Anyway, now I have recovered the power of speech I’m not going to waste it.

The lake at Rufford was still partly frozen, providing hard standing for a variety of birds. We had bird food with us and, as you can see from the video it inspired some enthusiastic feeding.  The light was fading, so we restricted ourselves to the lakeside. I did try a couple of photos of squirrels under the trees but the light was so bad that camera shake rendered them useless.

I’m currently trying to improve my bird identification skills so I had a good look at the gulls and was pleased to find two that were different from the mass of Black Headed Gulls. They were both immature birds so they have lots of brown feathers and their beaks and feet are different colours from the mature adults. I took plenty of photographs and checked them against pictures on a gull ID website. Yes, there are such things.

immature Common gull
Black Headed gul
Immature Herring Gul
greylag Goose

One of the gulls seems to be an immature Common Gull. As you may gather from the name, it isn’t a rare gull. The other is an immature Herring Gull. They are even commoner than Common Gulls. It would have been nice to have spotted a rare gull but at least I managed to see them amongst all the others.