Chiltern Birder

Yesterday we had a good range of tits on the feeders with blues, greats and at least one coal. What was striking was the total lack of finches of any sort. This was rectified today with two cock bullfinches and a chaffinch in the garden at the same time. Food that had been untouched on the ground feeder vanished overnight so I will try and remember to set a camera trap tonight.

In the week since the last post there has been minimal activity in the garden, just a couple of visits by a single blue tit or robin. Things are looking up this morning though. The garden is still pretty quiet but in a couple of minutes watching after breakfast there were a pair of blue tits squabbling over the feeders. A robin also paid a visit and a goldfinch perched for a minute at the bottom of the garden but didn't come to the feeder. There were then several visits by a coal tit who took each sunflower seed away to a tree at the other side of the garden next door to eat it. While tits will normally eat fat based products while perched on the feeder they seldom eat sunflower seeds in situ . When they are around in numbers they seldom go beyond the nearest bush to the feeder but singletons tend to go further away.

October and November are always quiet in my garden. I hve had some fat balls out for some time now (see previous post) and since seeing a couple of visits by a robin and one by a blue tit I added a seed feeer with a handful of sunflower seeds. Today I had a brief visit by a mixed flock of blue and long tailed tits. they didn't stay long but at least put some visible peck marks on the fat feeder. Hopefully, now that they know that there is food here they will be back soon. I have also fulled the seed feeder but it is usually the finches that get through these in quantity.