With the comparatively warm, wet and windy weather there is less activity on the feeders than I would expect at this time of year but the long tailed tits have finally started coming into the garden. One thing that I have noticed is the difference that feeder position makes. In the back garden there are two feeders on poles, one with a fat bar and one with sunflower seeds. The blue tits will fly to one of the bushes, look around, fly to the feeder and grab a seed or piece of fat and return to the bush to eat it. In the front there is a fat block hung in one of the quince trees. Here the blue and great tits will sit on the feeder and and eat what they take on the spot.
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.
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