The weekend's snow has covered the garden. There is a bare patch under the feeder but the tracks over the rest of the garden are all made by birds. This morning, before refilling the feeder I saw my first nuthatch of the winter in the garden. Last week we also added a pied wagtail to the garden't species count. A blackbird has finally ventured out from under the shrubs at the bottom of the garden to take the meal worms and raisins that I scattered on the snow together with a wood pigeon.
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...
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