Skip to main content

The Quiet Time

 From past experience I don't expect to see a huge amount of activity in the garden until mid November at the earliest. The sunflower seeds in the back garden are still being taken and I see occasional blue or great tits and occasionally a goldfinch or bullfinch. There isn't much touching the fat and I expect that I will have to take those feeders down soon or the content s will go mouldy. Nothing seem to be taking the fat balls from the hanging feeder any more while the fat bar in the starling feeder just seems to get an occasional visit from a robin.

In the front garden there is a massive crop of berries on the rowan tree. A pair of blackbirds seem to have settled in for the long haul and fly out of the tree with angry alarm calls when I go in or out of the house. Despite the rich harvest I suspect that they will still have the tree stripped before the winter migrants put in a show.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kites Spreading East

 I haven't been posting much due personal matters but still have my eyes open. One thing that has struck me is the eastward spread of birds of prey. I have seen buzzards over Havering-atte-Bower but the big suprise in the past month as been a red kite over the M25 near Stapleford Abbotts in Essex. The skys still look empty by Chiltern standards though. A nice little spot last week was a goldcrest during a visit to Kew Gardens.  I have downloaded the Merlin app which supposedly identifies birdsong. I have had little opportunity to try it out but a quck test in the garden showd that it correctly told me that I could hear jackdaws and a robin. I look forward to using it on the coast to see if it can distinguish the various waders for me. 
Post a Comment
Read more

Not as Quiet as I Thought

 The garden has seemed very quiet with hardly any birds seen but I hadn't been explicitly looking. I have just started putting a little food out in the front and in 24 hours have seen Robin, Great and Blue Tits and Magpies landing in my tiny front garden. Yesterday I heard a song that was unusual to me which the Merlin app identified as a Blackcap. Unfortunately for me the bird was ensconsed in the middle of my Forsythia which is still in full leaf and I couldn't get a sighting. This afternoon I saw Robins in the garden and corvids overhead. I set Merlin running while I swept fallen leaves from the front path. The app identified Robin, Rook, Wren, Jackdaw, Greenfinch and Blackbird. I also heard Parakeets but not while the app was running. 
Post a Comment
Read more

A Little More Normal

 After a couple of days of frost the garden looks more like a typical winter's day with birds visiting throughout the day. Blue tits are the main visitor plus one or two marsh (or possibly willow) tits and the occasional great tit. A flock of long tailed tits paid a fairly brief visit. Robins in the back garden have paired, seemingly a little later than the ones in the front.  Due to ill health the ivy on my back fence hasn't been trimmed and has developed a good crop of berries. The only bird that I have seen showing interest has been a wood pigeon which spent some time yesterday feasting on them. In the front I put out a fat block yesterday afternoon which, so far, has attracted a grey squirrel. The pair of robins and the occasional blackbird are active on the hanging table.
Post a Comment
Read more