Saturday morning birdwatch

This morning, I took the time to go out and try to film and watch some of our garden birds. It probably won't just be this morning either. With Shirl at Shirls Gardenwatch, we planned to do a weekly posting each on the birds visiting the garden either during that week or just on the morning of the post. They shouldn't be long posts, but a light read for the weekend. Please forgive me if mine does end up being long! I do love to watch the birds at weekend mornings, and then come inside to some breakfast. I will be sitting inside my "birdwatch hut" most Saturday mornings which I have previously talked about to watch them.

I find that in my garden, between 8:00 and 9:00 is when the birds mostly come in to feed. So, I went out at about 8:30 and set up my camera in our office building, looking out onto the feeders. I had my camera resting on something, which isn't ideal. I would like to get a tripod soon so that the footage is smoother. I was quite happy with the outcome this morning however, and I caught quite a few birds on film. I edited the videos as little as I could because I didn't want to lose any quality, which is why the clips are quite long. They took an age to upload!

Possibly one of my favourite garden birds is the Coal Tit. They are so hard to film though because they are so quick. They visited several times throughout the morning with the Blue Tits. In the videos below, notice how quick the Blue Tits and Coal Tits visit compared with the Greenfinches. In the first video below you will notice a Chaffinch in the background. They are a bit more brief than the Greenfinches, and are more reluctant to come in and feed. The Greenfinches struggle to get inside the cage feeder as the holes are quite small. This means that some of the smaller birds use it more.


The next video, below is mostly of the Blue and Coal Tits. At the end of the clip, you will see a Greenfinch scaring off a poor Coal Tit. They are much more dominant and are larger too, so they get top spot on the feeders. The Blue Tit seems to be struggling to think of the best way to get into the feeder, and takes longer than usual at the feeder. In the bottom video, most of the birds are finches. The female Chaffinch stays before being scared off by something.



Throughout the week, the bird feeders have been busy and I have definately enjoyed watching them. Another tiny bird, the Wren has been visiting recently. They aren't seed-eaters, so they must be finding insects in our trees at the end. Also recently there have been a few visits from a Great Spotted Woodpecker, but they don't stay long and are quite secretive too. Also, as soon as I had finished filming the clips above, I saw the return of the Starlings on our roof. Lots of action here at the moment, so hopefully these birds return during the week ready for next Saturday.

So there you are... some of our garden birds. Hope you enjoy Shirl's post too. I was going to just say that if you wanted to join in to this weekly or fortnightly posting about birds, please do and let me know. Its great fun, and certainly gets me out of bed in the mornings!
All videos taken in my garden on 18-10-08.