Chiltern Birder

The bullfinches haven't returned but we are regularly seeing goldfinches on all four ports of the seed feeder. I am having to top up the sunflower seeds every few days now. We are also seeing chaffinches and all the usual tits, blue, great, long tailed and coal. There was also a starling on the fat ball holder today but these aren't going down at anything like the speed of the seeds. I won't fill the other fat feeders for a little while yet. At ground level we have the usual selection, dunnock, robin, blackbird and wood pigeon but the pigeons don't seem to be frequent visitors as the ground feeder isn't being cleared yet. It took several days for a spillage of sunflower seeds to be cleared, I don't know if it was birds, field mice or badgers that were responsible. I was out and about in east London last weekend. Parakeets were very obvious in Hackney, I heard them from inside the car in Victoria Park Road (yes they are that loud) and saw them over Broadway M...

With the mild weather we are not seeing a lot of birds in the garden yet. The fat feeder in the front garden is seeing very little activity. In the back the starlings are busy with the fat feeder and goldfinches are regulars on the sunflower seeds. There are random visits by blue tits and this morning I was lucky enough to see a coal tit pay a very brief visit. At ground level a pair of wood pigeons stamp over the plants and a dunnock and a wren occasionally come out of hiding. Not far away in the fields there is a lot of activity. A flock of skylarks was busy among recently sprouted brassicas while yellowhammers were flitting through a hawthorn hedge. It was pure chance that one was still for long enough to be identified with the naked eye. Normally I only see them from the car when they find singing posts on roadside hedges in the spring. Away from home the River Chess is in a fairly poor way, at the moment rising from the spring by the Water Meadow car park in the town. It is sh...