Redwings and Skylarks

Driving home from the station this evening I noticed a couple of birders in the lay-by in Stony Lane between Little Chalfont and Latimer. I have no idea what they had been watching but saw nothing interesting from the car. I have seen red kites in the Latimer area on a couple of occasions and once and egret flying up the Chess valley but just a crows and pigeons tonight.

Getting back to the title, I was struck by the combination of winter and summer last weekend. On Saturday I was walking in the National Trust woods at Ashridge. A flock of what looked like small thrushes kept moving away from me, I had foolishly left the bins at home and couldn't make a firm identification but would put a very high probability on a flock of redwing. I also saw a solitary muntjac who was quite unconcerned by my presence. At the NT's feeding station behind the visitor centre pied wagtails, chaffinches and great tits were all in evidence. The morning's walk was rounded off with lunch at The Greyhound in Aldbury. It was my first visit for a while and there seemed to be more emphasis on the restaurant but the food was as excellent as ever.

On Sunday summer seemed to be coming with yellowhammers visible along the hedgerows and a skylark singing in the fields.

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Returning to the Garden

High summer and early autumn is always a quiet time for birds in my garden. I no longer feed after my summer holiday as I have ended up throwing away far to much mouldy fat or seed. Normally I would wait until November before putting the feeders back out but a party of long tailed tits appeared in the front garden today so I think that it might be worth while trying a single fat bar for the moment. For the past couple of weeks I have seen a lot of roadside signs saying "beware of deer" in places where I wouldn't normally see them. Last weekend I decided that they might be justified when I encountered a herd of roe deer in the road between Ley Hill and Latimer. While muntjac are seen often enough the roes tend to be shy and this was only the third time that I have had a good look at some in all the years that I have lived here.

More Starlings

At least one brood of starlings have been regular visitors to the feeder and today the fledglings got the hang of taking the food for themselves. Other broods must be less developed as adults were still taking away quantities of fat. The tits aren't so common at the moment, I don't know if this is because they have dispersed, if wild food is available or if pressure from the starlings has driven them off. Single blue tits are dropping in fairly regularly and a coal tit took fat away as well. The woodpecker seems to have become a regular visitor and still has a brood to feed. He definitely comes before the starlings in the pecking order and keeps them off the feeder until he has finished. The new feeder with perching rings is popular with the chaffinches and the goldfinches, the latter suddenly seem to prefer the high energy mix to the nyjer seed. With all this demand for feeding young ones the fat is going down very rapidly and I am putting larger quantities out on the ground t...

Usual Suspects

With some cold dry weather there has been a lot of activity on the feeders this weekend. With three different robins visiting the garden there have been fewer fights than I would have expected. The sight of the weekend has been a robin regularly visiting the starling feeder with a pair of beady eyes peeping over the top of the fat bar. As I had run out of sunflower hearts I topped up the ground hopper with pinhead oatmeal which seems to have been very popular. I even had a song thrush inside the cage which is a first. Althogther the weekend has included goldfinches, chaffinches, great tits, blue tits, coal tits, marsh/willow tit (I must learn how to distinguish those), blackbird, song thrush, robin, dunnock and wood pigeon. Unusually for this area a heron also flew across the garden during the day. I haven't seen any long tailed tits or greenfinches around here for a while and there wasn't a single house sparrow around during the weekend.

Chiltern Birder

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