Tag Archives: garden birds

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.

 

 

Ornithological Notes

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Bear with me, the chronology is a nightmare.

Last night I said – “Yesterday morning, I saw a Goldfinch on one of the feeders in the back garden. It’s quite a common bird – number 8 in last year’s RSPB Birdwatch, but we’ve only seen two since we moved in.

Goldfinch

We have also had no House Sparrows and no Starlings, (Number 1 and Number 3 in the list, and only seen Long Tailed Tit, another top ten birds a handful of times. The 20024 results were

  • House Sparrow
  • Blue Tit
  • Starling
  • Woodpigeon
  • Blackbird
  • Robin
  • Great Tit
  • Gold Finch
  • Magpie
  • Long Tailed Tit”

Then, tired, and conscious that I had a big day ahead of me, I went to bed.

We used to have goldfinches on the farm, and in the back garden in Nottingham, so I have been surprised at the lack of them in Peterborough, particularly as we are on the edge of an area I would deem ideal. In Nottingham we actually had them singing as they perched on TV aerials. Here – two in three months.

Red Kite

Anyway, it’s a start. We then went to Nottingham to carry on with the house clearance. On the way back we stopped at McDonalds at Colsterworth and were surprised to hear the call of a kite. It shares some of the buzzard’s mew, but with a plaintiff whistle in it.

We looked round and saw a kite perching in a tree that had recently had some bits lopped off it. We have seen kites from the car park before, but never this close. It seemed to be calling to a kite that was perching two trees along. They continued doing this, and because we had to get on, we went tom eat. Twenty minutes later, the calling kite was still there, but jackdaws were occupying the nearby trees. They ere gathering to fly off and roost rather than mobbing the kite, but the other bird had gone. I will be looking up kites and courtship later. It’s an area near woodland, so it’s looking good for more kite breeding.

If you don’t look up the Colsterworth link look up this one – unbelievable!

Finally, arriving home, we saw some starlings perching in a tree near the house. I said to Julia how strange it was to see them so close to us, but not to get them in the garden. Not that I want too many of them as they do tend to take over. When we had unloaded I looked at the feeders and there was a starling on the fat ball feeder. Maybe they are starting to move about for spring.

Starlings at Slaidburn

Also, a couple of nights ago Julia heard the blackcap (the “Northern Nightingale” singing. We are now worried he is getting ready to leave for home (assuming he is one of the winter migrants).