During the recent storms my sunflower seed feeder vanished, possibly stolen by a squirrel. With the old feeder I observed that chaffinces didn't seem able to perch and use it although goldfinches and bullfinces were fine. A day or two ago I saw a pair of chaffinches perched quite happily and feeding on the new feeder. I think that the perches are ticker and a little longer than the old ones which presumably makes a difference for the finches.
Mostly though it has been blue and great tits on the feeders with robins, blackbirds, dunnocks and wood pigeons taking food on the ground.. The badger seems to visit on most nights as any uneaten raisins are cleaned up, and the feeding tray pushed around and turned over,
My next door neighbour as a broken slat on their kitchen ventilator and a pair of robins appear to be nesting inside. I hasten to add that these are static ventilators built into the brickwork not fans. Other than that the lesser celandines are in bloom under the front hedge, I tweeted a photo which I thought rather dull but which got over 500 views in 5 hours.
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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