Chiltern Birder

The advantage of using a tripod with the camera trap is that you have far more control over the position. With it set to full height I captured this nice clip of the badger at the ground feeder. After my previous post about choices made by the birds I noticed that his preference was for the raisins before clearing up the fat pellets.

So far winter hasn't brought anything exciting to the garden but, with the mild weather, it is clear which are the most favoured bird foods. The finches, of course, love the sunflower hearts. The blue and great tits are also showing a preference for sunflower seed and largely ignore the fat balls in the adjacent hanging feeder. I have even seen them waiting on the feeder arms for the finches to leave a free port rather than peck at the fat balls. I also hung a FlutterButter peanut butter feeder next to the seed feeder and that has been totally ignored. We were getting a small group of starlings who were making a big dent in the fat block and the front and the fat balls in the back garden but they have moved on and I am starting to become concerned that the remaining contents are going to become mouldy. At ground level I am feeding raisins, fat pellets and dried mealworms. The robin will take fat pellets and mealworms but can't clear the feeders on his own. A blackbird will t...

In most years I only see starlings in the garden in spring and early summer when they turn out mob handed and get through half a kilo of fat in a day. In the past week, however, I have had a part of three on the fat feeders in both the front and back gardens. Another usual visit today was by a pair of greenfinches who briefly came to the sunflower seed feeder. The feeders are all very busy now with seed being topped up daily. The dried mealworms in the ground feeder are proving popular with the blackbird and robin but the fat pellets only seem to be of interest to the magpies and wood pigeons. Despite the claims by the feed merchant the raisins are generally ignored by the birds but the badger cleans them up overnight. A group of long tailed tits made a suprise visit at dusk today. Judging by their behaviour I suspect that they were taling a last feed of the night before roosting in my neighbours leylandii. This seems rather more attractive to birds now that old man's beard has ...

The birds seem to be discovering the feeders in my back garden. We had several visits from a coal tit this morning which is the first that I have seen for a while. Another garden first for this autumn was a blackbird which foraged in the flower beds before sampling the dried mealworms in one of th ground feeders. It has taken experimentation over a couple of years to find the optimum placing for ground feeders where they can be seen from the windows while being attractive to the birds. The magpies and the wood pigeons are far more likely to feed away from cover so I put a second feeder in the centre of the lawn to reduce competition with the smaller birds.

Walking in the Crabtree Wood communuty woodland in Ley Hill today it was a pleasure to come across a spindle tree. I did come across a specimen in a hedgerow locally a few years ago but when I looked for it recently there was no trace so it is nice to have a replacement. The are also seems to be attracting long tailed tits which have yet to come to my garden this autumn. Staying in the area the golf course is a good place to see thrushes, I have seen them on the fairways whenever I have crossed that part of the common. At home the mild, damp weather meant the the sunflower seed feeder was starting to clog. I emptied it into the ground feeder tray, and cleaned and disinfected it. I should have set a camera trap as the pile of seeds was cleared overnight. At the moment we are getting regular visits from blue and great tits taking seeds but they don't seem very interested in the fat feeder. A couple of individuals went to it when I was cleaning the seed feeder but they return...

The fat pellets put out for the robins in the ground feeder trays seem to be attracting magpies. The pellets can vanish within 15 or 20 minutes of being put out and, as often as not, I don't even seev the culprits. Luckily the robins seem quite content with the dried mealworms which the magpies definitely regard as second best. The magapies are suprisingly nervy birds for their and will fly off at the slightest movement within the house, even just a twitch of an upstairs curtain. This time of year is usually very quiet when it comes to garden birds but we do have regular visits from blue and great tits that require keeping the sunflower seed feeder about half full althouhg they have mostly ignored the fat ball that I hung on the other feeder. Chaffinches and goldfinches also turn up occasionally but only singletons. A wren has put in an occasional appearance but had no interest in the ground feeders. Uneaten food usually vanishes before the next morning ass we often get a badger...

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...