Siskins

Took a stroll through the snowy quarry yesterday. Saw a small group of bullfinches and, for a couple of minutes before they flew off in twos and threes, a tree full of fieldfares. There was also a small group of siskins and sure enough three visited my feeders today. They are obviously novices at the feeder lark because one male took a good few fluttering attempts at landing before giving up and giving himself a good embarrassed grooming.

Snow

Well, we'd managed to avaid the worst of it in Northampton until last night that is. About 3 inches fell overnight which meant a bit of sweeping was necessary to clear some ground for birdseed.  The wood pigeons really enjoyed it. Visitors to the feeders are still at relatively low numbers which suggests that birds are still finding plenty of wild food. That said we had the local sparrow gang around yesterday - about 15 individuals. 

Tuesday 30 November

The first snow of the winter means a bit of garden sweeping to enable the birds to find the scattered food.  Mind you its the squirrels, of which we have four domiciled in our ash tree, who seem to be doing most of the feeding.


A marauding squad of long-tailed tits came through this morning for their characteristic 'flying' visit.  Not much else to report except that one of our dunnocks has managed find a way to get to a feeder by stretching across from a nearby branch.

First Post

Well I've been garden birdwatching for years now and quite happily too. My daughter tells me I should share my happiness in the form of a blog. So here we are.  

My garden is medium sized and only 500 meters from the nearest bit of significant woodland. I've gone a bit mad with the feeding station and now have five feeders containing the likes of sunflower hearts, nyjer seeds and peanuts. I also put out the square suet feeders plus the odd suet ball.

Our regulars include all the usual suspects but given the general decline in some species I count myself lucky that we have house sparrows and starlings.  The former are very timid and the latter descend on the suet feeders like a bunch of hooligans.

Our favourite daily visitor is the great spotted woodpecker. We get both the male and female, sometimes together, and junior of course.

As the cold weather sets in we will no doubt see some of our occasional visitors so I'm looking forward to seeing bullfinches, blackcaps and maybe a nuthatch. We've had siskins for the last two years although the numbers were much lower last year so hopefully they will return after Christmas.

I'll post from time to time especially when something unusual calls in.  We've already had a brambling (8th Nov) which was a garden first for me.