Chiltern Birder

I went into the garden this morning to work out what jobs need doing this week and heard something tht I didn't immediately recognise calling in the bushes. A few moments later it hopped out onto a branch and I could see that it must be a warbler. It then very conveniently posed on the fence and I had a good look at the markings. I don't have the minutiae of warbler identification consigned to memory so after a quick look in the field guide and listening to a couple of recordings on YouTube I was 100% sure that I had added a chiffchaff to my garden list. I have a small quantity of sunflower hearts in one of the feeders and I get one or two finches every day. This morning's was a singleton chaffinch but I have had pairs of goldfinches on previous days. They all seem very reluctant to use the lowest feeding ports and with the wet weather I suspect that I will have to empty out the feeder to remove any damp and clogged seed before the main winter activity despite giving it a...

 The badgers were active over the weekend with some significant damage to the lawn. As the bird feeders needed cleaning before the winter I emptied them into the ground feeder trays and set up a camera. The result was a badger spending at least half an hour in the garden taking both fat and sunflower hearts as well as rooting in the grass for bugs.   After rooting in the grass for a while he checks out the sunflower hearts then takes another fat ball. After rooting for bugs he finally decides to taste the sunflower hearts. He seems to be pushing the sunflower hearts into a heap.

 Autumn is clearly coming in with mushrooms and toadstools appearing in the fields and woods. This fine specimen was one of many on my walk today.       The walk took us along Green Lane to White End near Latimer. There was quite a sight with the sky around one of the houses in the hamlet full of house martins. They all suddenly settled on the roof, apparently basking in the sun for a second before all taking flight again. Suddenly they all flew off towards Latimer only to return a few seconds later and settled on the roof again. It was quite a spectacle and I wished I was able to linger all morning to watch it. The return along Bun's Lane was noteable for the birds invisible in the canopy as the trees met over the bridleway. I know that I disturbed at lease one jay and one green woodpecker judging buy the angry calls close above my head. In the garden I will have to dispose of the contents of the two fat feeders but the sunflower seeds are still being taken by occas...

 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.

I glanced out of the window this morning and saw a bird on the feeder with plumage that I didn't recognise. It was clearly a finch but the angle meant that I couldn't see details. Watching for a couple of minutes the way it kept looking around seemed very familiar and a quick check in a field guide confirmed my suspicion that the semi-resident pair of bullfinches had raised a brood and at least one had survived.

In recent weeks the garden has been almost devoid of birds. The resident pair of wood pigeons have been munching their way through the fat bars on the starling feeder while a magpie makes occasional attacks on the fat balls on a hanging feeder. Hardly anything has been taking sunflower seeds, so much so that I had to clean out the existing seeds as they had become caked at the bottom. Yesterday, however, a pair of bullfinches appeared and spent some time there. It was striking how faded the cock bird had become, nothing like the vivid brick red of the spring. In the front garden the rowan tree is laden with berries, the branches so heave that I bumped my head on one bunch. It was very noticeable that it had only recently stopped raining! I am sure that the tree will be stripped bare soon enough but if previous years are anything to go by I am unlikely to to see a single bird feeding on it.

I was walking through Latimer today and heard what sounded to me like a ring necked parakeet calling in Parkfield and another among confiers further up the road. This is certainly the closest that I have encountered them to Chesham although I have seen and heard them in Rickmansworth and once in Chemies. I seem to have seen so many roe deer recently that walking through the woods to Latimer without seeing any seemed quite unusual. What I did realise today is that I have seen more roe deer than muntjac durling lockdown, when driving at night in normal times it is the other way round. Out and about the bluebell season is long gone but plenty of opportunity to appreciate the delicate flowers of the grasses, at least until they are cut for silage, plus the occasional field poppy. The garden has gone very quiet, the blue tits seem to have followed the starlings and I can go several days without topping up the feeders.