Chiltern Birder

The edge of the storm has simply blown the birds away from the back garden. The wagtail landed by developed a strange sideways drift as he tried to run across the lawn. The squirrel baffle acted as a sail in the high wind and I decided to take the feeder down rather than risk damage if it blew down.

Our resident bullfinch seems to have found a mate, yesterday I saw both a cock and a hen bird in the garden. That is the first hen bullfinch this season. I did notice that she seemed rather more adept at using the perches on the feeder than her partner. The feeder isn't 100% squirrel proof, I have twice found one actually on the feeder but have not seen how they reach it. While not perfect it is a great improvement. Mostly the squirrels now seem content with eathing the broken portions of sunflower seed that lay on the ground. With the feeder now on the lawn the volume that gets dropped is clearly visible. Among the other birds we have had occasional visits from a greenfinch as well as the usual goldfinch, chaffinch, blue and great tits, robin, dunnock and blackbird. The first signs of spring are coming through, at Boxmoor, thanks to temporary traffic lights, I had a chance to appreciate a bank covered in celandine. With the extra couple of hundred feet of altitude the plants...

When I first started this blog eleven years ago greenfinches were the predominent finch visiting the garden. These days they are most unusual so I was please to see one bullying the goldfinches on the feeder today. It has been a very active morning in the garden a brief visit from a coal tit as well as the usual blues and greys. Among the finches our solitary cock bullfinch paid us a visit as well as chaffinches of both genders. Down at ground level the pied wagtail is still around as well as the usual selection of wood pigeon, robin and dunnock. Since writing the above at lunchtime we have also had a brief visit by a nuthatch.

The new squirrel baffle has revealed just how much food the goldfinches waste. Yesterday I cleaned a layer of splilled sunflower seed fragments from the baffle and today I had to repeat the process much to the enjoyment of the wood pigeons. This may also have been instrumental in a return visit from the pied wagtail. On the other hand the bullfinch keeps coming back and takes what is on the baffle itself. While both seed and fat feeders are well used in the back garden the feeder at the front of the house is seeing very little use. In previous years this has been popular with great spotted woodpeckers but at the moment it just seems to be the robin. If it hadn't been so cold I think that the fat bar would be mouldy by now.

Not a rarity but a newcomer to my garden today was a pied wagtail. It landed on the feeder before dropping down to the lawn. On the other hand a robin seems to have taken to sunflower seeds and, with some difficulty, flutters onto a feeder perch to grab one or two seeds before flying off. This is despite there being spillage available on the ground which attracts the chaffinches. I have bought a longer feeder pole which, so far, seems to have defeated the squirrels. An advantage of the height is that I can see the feeders while seated in my armchair rather than standing at the window, with the risk of disturbing the birds. The garden is busy for much of the day now with goldfinches and blue and great tits flocking to the feeders together with random visits by long tailed tits although starling numbers are way down. At ground level in the past few days we have had bullfinch, chaffinch, dunnock, blackbird  and robin. Our resident wren has either moved on or failed to survive the ...

Despite the frost and fog I noticed that far more birds seemed to be singing. In addition a woodpecker was drumming this afternoon. On the other hand, walking into Chesham this morning the winter visitors were still around with a redwing foraging by Codmore Playing Field. In the garden the goldfinches put in a reappearance but only briefly. The main visitors were a mix of blue and great tits who descended on the shrubs as a flock and paid individual visits to the feeder. We also had a chaffinch which preferred feeding on the ground. Moving the seed feeder seems to have also reduced the number of birds visiting the fat feeders.

I took a trip over to Stockers Lake again. Conditions and species were much the same as in my post of 29 December. The one thing of note was that the grebes are into their breeding plumage, we should be seeing some head wagging displays very soon. At home, I had been away for 3 nights and the seed feeder had been emptied. The goldfinches didn't reappear after it was refilled, hopefully they will be back in a day or two. The main entertainment was the squirrel trying to get to the feeder. It took the grey bandit between 4 and 9 attempts to make it. He needed the baffle to be tilted at just the right angle so he could catch the base of the feeder with his fore paws and then swing his body to catch the pole with his hind legs.