Yellowhammers, Telephone Wires and Juveniles

Not all at the same time. The starlings seem to be moving on but I have had a baby blue tit being fed by the ground feeders for the last couple of days and a juvenile robin turned up investigating my mix of sunflower hearts and oatmeal in the hopper. As I had to go to work I didn't see if he returned for the fat and special robin mixture that I put on the tray.

With fewer birds visible among the greenary I tend to notice those on telephone wires much more. There seem to be a couple of perches that are so well used that one could believe that somebody had put model birds there permenantly. Just coming into Ley Hill from Latimer one wire is a regular for swallows while in Ley Hill itself a pair of wood pigeons seem to have taken up residence on another. One at least must be real as there was only one there tonight.

I was lucky this evening to have a yellowhammer pose in the road in front of the car, double lucky that nobody was following. Also on another wire was an unidentified bird with a beak full of insects.

With the warm weather the larger birds of prey seem to have moved out of the district. I have not seen a kite or a buzzard around Chesham for some time now. Certainly not since the heat wave beagan.

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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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