Chiltern Birder

With the warm weather the last few days the starling bar has started to melt on the side that gets the sun. I have one more in stock and that will be it until the winter. There is still a decent stock of other foods and I will continue to feed these until they run out. Starlings have pretty well vanished now with only one or two juveniles from late broods coming to the feeder. I have been seeing the occasional house sparrow and now that the starlings have gone the blackbirds seem to be hanging around more, including at least one juvenile. I have also had occasional visits from a song thrush. I saw a collared dove in the street outside the house this morning which was a suprise as I haven't seen one in the garden all year, probably longer. I haven't seen the woodpeckers for a week or so as well now.

On Thursday night I refilled both fat feeders and then went away for until tonight (Saturday). Half the fat block at the front of the house is still in place and the fat bar at the back is about a third of the way down. Only a week or so ago the fat bars were going in a day and the fat blocks by lunchtime. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered with a bulk reorder of both earlier this week, I think that will be my last order for the season now.

Today I came home to find nearly half a fat block in the feeder at the front of the house. At the back about a third of the fat bar in the starling feeder had been consumed. This is a very sudden but about the same time as last year for the starling chicks to start moving on. The pied woodpeckers are regulars at the moment, both the male and female of the pair. Not much else to say about the garden. On the drive home from work the yellowhammers are in evidence perched on the telephone wires.

The juvenile starlings are now feeding themselves and making a lot of noise about it. I put a fresh 1 litre fat bar out just now and one sat on top and defended it against all comers. The great tits have returned and I have seen both the blues and greys feeding their chicks during the last few days. I have also seen the blackbird carrying away raisins from the ground feeder. While looking up woodpecker identification I realised that I had been writing "greater" rather than "great" spotted woodpecker for all these years. Perhaps I should stick to "pied", with the added advantage of fewer key strokes. Whatever you want to call him the cock bird has been putting in an appearance for the last few days and taking on the starlings for a share of the fat feeders.

Waiting for a delivery today I was able to get a better look at what is going on. The woodpeckers are around, one came briefly to the feeder while I was watching and at another time I got a glimpse of one flying off. It was nice to see a song thrush in the garden picking up the pieces of fat that the starlings had dropped. There were also visits from blue tits, goldfinches, wood pigeons, dunnock and chaffinches. The feeder at the front of the house is more popular with the starlings than the dedicated feeder at the back. This is probably because there is a nice expanse of freshly mown grass.

The starlings are still going through the fat bars as if there was no tomorrow but are spending time on the ground feeders as well now. The wood pigeon takes the odd peck at them if they get too close. This evening I had a blackbird on the starling feeder. I looked around for the camera as he was posing nicely and turned back in time to see him fly off with a beak full of fat. I put the camera down again and turned back to the window to see a greater spotted woodpecker land on my next door neighbour's leylandii hedge. Reach for the camera and he or she (I didn't get a clear view of the head) is gone of course. I think into the hedge rather than flying away. As I thought there might be a chick there I didn't investigate.

In the current hot spell one of the fat blocks melted yesterday. Curiously the starling in the position that I thought would be warmer is in one piece. I think a different fat is used, presumably with a higher melting point. The starlings are still around in numbers while wood pigeons, blue tits, goldfinches, chaffinches, blackbirds, robins and dunnocks are all regular visitors. I did see one cock sparrow in the garden recently but great tits, coal tits and greenfinches are all absent. On Sunday morning I saw a kite west of Hemel again, over the A414 between the M1 and the woods. From posts on various forums I suspect that they may have nested in that wooded area.