Birds stocking up

I decided I would go out into our garden this morning and watch the birds coming in to feed. It was quite frosty this morning, so the last of the snow hasn't quite melted yet on the shaded part of the lawn. It was quite warm in the sun though, so it was nice to be out there. I set up my tripod fairly close to the feeders, but the birds were still coming in to feed. It was great to get such close-up views of the birds.

The first bird I saw out there was a Goldfinch, although I was unable to get a good photo, as they were a little shy to come in close to feed. A Starling, which was singing on the roof for a good ten minutes finally built up the confidence to fly down into the garden. It landed on the fat block feeder, which has been very popular recently. I was glad the sun was shining, as it showed up the various different colours of the Starlings plumage.

The bird only flew onto the feeder when other birds came into the garden to feed alongside it. The shot below shows the Starling trying to balance on the feeder.

After feeding for a while, the Starling seemed happy to just perch in the apricot tree in the sun. Maybe it would be worth buying a Starling nest box for our garden. There are definitely enough of them around.

A group of four Long-Tailed Tits visited the garden too, also feeding on the fat blocks. They are surprisingly, very tame birds around here, and are very happy to come into the garden whilst I am taking photos.

The birds do occasionally squabble, but generally, they share the feeders very well, and there is often a feeder completely surrounded by the birds.

The Great Spotted Woodpecker visited twice this morning, but I was in the house on both occasions. The Blackcaps are still around, but are sticking to dense cover, making them quite hard to see. I heard some tapping on the entrance hole of the nest box, and the light levels were flickering, but nothing came into the box.

For Christmas, I was delighted to get a ground bird table, which is now on the lawn quite near the house, giving us great views of the birds. Magpies, Robins and Woodpigeons have all been enjoying the food provided on this table. I haven't got any photos of these visitors yet, although a photo of the feeder in its location can be seen below:

This may be my last post of 2009, as we are going to Wales for New Year. if it is, happy New Year to all, and all the best for 2010!

How different it is

We have just spent Christmas with family on the south coast near Portsmouth for a few days. Spending some time in my Grandma's garden on Boxing Day just made me think how different it is there, compared to how it is in our own garden in Buckinghamshire...

One thing that wasn't to be seen on the south coast was snow- something that has been around in our garden for about a week now. Much of the rest of the UK has also had heavy snowfall (by our standards anyway) over the last two weeks or so. So, without the snow, plants were much easier to see in the garden. Surprisingly, there is still plenty of colour to be seen in the south coast garden, even at this time of year.

The berries in the photo above really brightened up the border of the garden by the hedge. They were growing on small shrubs, in little clusters. The photos in this posting have all been taken using Mum's DSLR camera (Canon 450D). I have noticed that this camera is much more able to take good close-up shots of plants, but, because the zoom on the lens isn't great, I tend to use my own "point and shoot" camera to take photos of birds, etc.

Some lichens which varied in colour on a stone bird bath in the garden caught my attention too...

I was also surprised to see some tomato-like fruits growing on a small green shrub in the garden. Again, not sure of the name (I'm still useless with identifying plants).

Whilst the south coast garden is much more colourful at this time of year, I would say that our garden is getting more bird visitors. We take part in the BTO Garden Birdwatch scheme, which, in case you aren't aware, is a weekly survey of the birds which visit your garden every week. We have been doing this for a few years now, although I must admit that we are fairly infrequent in entering our counts to the BTO website. Anyway, I was truly amazed at how many new species we saw in our garden on the week starting 20/12/09. Here is our list for that week (a total of 23 species):

Blackbird (1)

Chaffinch (3)

Dunnock (2)

Great Spotted Woodpecker (1)

House Sparrow (4)

Magpie (2)

Starling (5)

Blackcap (2)

Bullfinch (1)

Coal Tit (1)

Great Tit (2)

Woodpigeon (4)

Blue Tit (5)

Carrion Crow (1)

Collared Dove (2)

Goldfinch (5)

Greenfinch (4)

Long-Tailed Tit (2)

Wren (1)

Red Kite (1)

Feral Pigeon (1)

Redwing (2)

Robin (2)

However, even though we have had lots of new visitors in our garden, we aren't getting any nest box visitors, which is something that I did see in the south coast garden. A Blue Tit pair were very interested in a nest box on a wall in the garden for a good time. The birds in our garden aren't paired up yet, apart from the Great Tits although they are all being very territorial.

I may be able to get out tomorrow morning and watch our garden birds, so that I can share some photos with you, just to show what life is like in our garden at the moment. Anyway, enough from me, I hope you all had a very good Christmas, and enjoy the bank holiday!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone. Hope you all have a fantastic winter break.

Winter images

Last Friday was supposed to be my last day of school before the Christmas holidays. But I opened my curtains in the morning to see a snow-covered garden. School was cancelled, and I was so glad to be able to have a lie-in. The photo below shows the garden as the sun came up.

It had snowed pretty hard for much of Thursday night here in South-east England, and it was a cold morning on Friday. This cold weather and snow has really attracted a lot of interesting birds to the garden, as well as the usual visitors. We have seen a Great Spotted Woodpecker visit the garden almost daily for the last two weeks, which has been great to see. Also, two Blackcaps have been around, as well as two Redwing, which seem to be very numerous around here at the moment. Last week, we saw a Brambling visit the garden too, which was feeding among the Chaffinches.

Great, Coal, Blue and Long-tailed tits have been visiting in groups, surrounding the feeders. A photo of a Great Tit can be seen below. Still no sign of any roosters in our camera nest box, and actually, I haven't seen any daytime visits either. Hopefully this will pick up into January. I very nearly got a good shot of a Coal Tit in our apricot tree, but it flew away at the moment I was about to press the shutter button on my camera!

Starlings were frequent visitors too, squabbling in numbers over who's turn it was to feed on the fall block. It was great to see a Blackbird look so at home in the garden too, as we didn't really see this in the summer/autumn. The feeders needed topping up frequently during the day. It made me think that it must be hard for a small bird such as a Blue Tit to survive in such cold weather. They really didn't stop feeding all day, showing that it really is important to feed our garden birds at this time of year.

Generally, you would guess that it is our smallest birds which struggle most in the cold winter months, and this is mostly the case. However, I recently learnt that Coal Tits survive surprisingly well despite their tiny size. In the book, "A Field Guide to the Wildlife of the British Isles", by Alice Tomsett, it says, "The Coal Tit survives well in cold weather as it feeds on insects living underneath bark".

Last Sunday, we travelled up to Oldham to see my Grandpa, to find that it had snowed there too! On a walk on the hills of Oldham, it became very difficult to see anything. You'll see what I mean when you see the photo below!

The photo has come out a slightly strange colour, but hopefully you can get an idea as to what it was like there. Because it was so foggy, it was almost impossible to see where the land ended, and the sky started.

The roads were pretty dangerous at this point, as you can see from the photo below.

Back in his garden, the local birds were out in the snow feeding, similarly to how they were at home. A few starlings dropped down onto an arch in the garden, and sat there, waiting for an opportunity to feed. It was great to see so many birds making use of a single feeder that day. The birds which were unable to get a spot on the feeder fed on the ground, eating any fallen seeds from the feeder.

With Christmas just two days away, I wonder how many people in the UK have snowy gardens on Christmas day. I suspect there will still be some in ours. Lastly, if you are travelling over the next couple of days, I hope you all have safe journeys. Have a great Christmas!

It's not too late!

For any people who took part in the Tree O'Clock challenge between 11am and noon on Saturday 5th December, its not too late to send in the photos and details of your tree planting. National Tree Week and Breathing Places have extended the deadline for the photos to be sent in for counting. We can still "plant a world record"!

The Breathing Places website says that one record has already been broken (most trees planted by 100 people at a single site in one hour). In fact, this was broken at three different sites in the UK. Amazingly, at Gransha Park, alongside the river Foyle in Ireland, 26,422 trees were planted in one hour by a group of 100 people. And the main record (most trees planted by any number of people in one hour) can still be broken, if you send in your photos in to the organisers. Click here for instructions on how to do this.

We managed to plant a tree or two in our garden, as I'm sure many of you did too. However, this wasn't really part of the Tree O'Clock challenge. We bought some trees beforehand which weren't on the list of six trees provided for free by the organisers. So our results aren't really valid, and we didn't send the photos in. But I guess the aim of the event was to plant a good number of trees, and this, we have achieved :-)

The first plant in the ground was a Contoneaster tree. The photo was taken by me after school today.

Hopefully, next year, the berries from the tree will do a great job on feeding the birds too. I wonder what this shrub will look like in a couple of years?

We also planted a Rowan tree, which we did get for free from the organisers- but on the Sunday, so, again, it didn't count towards the world record. Although I didn't take a photo of this, as it really is just a twig sticking out of the ground at the moment!

Other shrubs which we planted were little Holly bushes. We planted eight of these most at the end of the garden underneath our conifers, although these are only little too...

We also planted a Hawthorn, which is, again, at the end of the garden. Hopefully, the blossom from this will be a nice sight next spring.

Elsewhere in the garden, there is still a little bit of colour to be seen-but only if you look carefully. Against our fence, near our conservatory, some winter-flowering Jasmines can be seen at the moment. Their bright yellow flowers really make that corner of the garden more colourful every winter. The lilies in our pond have just about finished flowering, so these are just about the last colourful plants left for this year.

One last note- still no birds roosting in our cosy nest box, despite the freezing temperature tonight. Maybe it will take a little longer for the birds to get used to its new location. Maybe the new year will see Blue and Great Tits investigate our nest box ready for spring.

Preparing for spring

It really has been a while since my last posting. So, today, I thought I would let you know why this has happened, and also, what has been going on in our garden recently. Before I write about why I haven't posted a lot recently, I will show you what has been going on in our garden today. The weather this morning was perfect, so I went outside with my camera and tripod and set it up towards the end of the garden, near our feeders. The first bird I saw was...

A Goldfinch. This one looked in particularly good condition. Even though I was very close to the feeders, these birds still came in to feed. The birds really seemed to be trying to eat as much as possible today, probably keeping fat reserves up ready for the middle of the winter. Maybe they could even be thinking as far ahead as spring, when they are eating at our feeders in December.

Blue Tits were also seen around the feeders in large groups. At one point, I could see more than 10 of them in the garden, squabbling over whose turn it was on the feeder. I was watching out for any action at the nest box, but saw nothing.

There were also Coal Tits, Great Tits and Long-tailed tits in the garden today, but I was unable to get photos of these. Its almost impossible to keep up with the Coal Tits as the fly around our garden. Whilst Great Tits were visiting frequently today, there only seem to be 2 or 3 of them around our garden.

We helped to prepare our garden birds for spring this weekend by putting up this Robin nest box in the ivy on our fence. I think its in a pretty well hidden part of the garden, and Robins are often seen around this area, so we are hoping it will be used at some point in the future. If we end up not getting any birds in our camera nest box next spring, we could maybe fix the camera into this box. I guess this box could also be used for Robins, Wrens etc. to roost in over the coming chilly months.

Now, what has been going on in our garden over the last few weeks. Well, we have mostly seen much the same as we saw today... the usual suspects. But we have really enjoyed seeing a Great Spotted Woodpecker visit our garden over the last week or so. Before this winter, it had been years since we had seen one of these, but, probably because of the cold weather, we have seen it visit 3 or 4 times just recently. I haven't yet been able to get any photos, and this woodpecker seems very shy. Hopefully, it will visit again soon.

We have also seen a Brambling visit the feeders today. Last winter, a small group of them visited the garden, often feeding with the Chaffinches, who look very similar. Again, these birds are quite shy, and were even being intimidated by smaller birds like Blue Tits at the feeders.

I thought I would also use this posting as an opportunity to talk about our camera nest box. About a month ago, we were seeing birds go in and out of our nest box, maybe looking for insects, but possibly looking for roosting sites too. However, over the last two weeks, we haven't seen a lot of action around our nest box. It was really getting cold as it was going dark today, so I thought we might be lucky enough to see a Blue Tit roost in our nest box, but nothing did. I have been following other blogs and websites with camera nest boxes, and many of them do have roosters at the moment. Maybe we will start to see more visits to our box after Christmas.

We also took part in the Tree O'Clock challenge last week, in which we planted a total of 12 shrubs and trees. More on that in my next posting.

One of the reasons why I have been unable to post over the last month or so is because I have lost my camera SD card. This had most of my recent photos stored on it, which I hadn't yet downloaded onto the computer. Also, I have just had a few exams, which I have had to prepare for, so I haven't had much time on school nights to write posts. We also had to repair our camera nest box cable because it had been chewed by a rat or a mouse. This meant I could not post any videos about any visitors we have had in there.

Also, sorry for not leaving comments on all of your blogs, I have been reading them though. And lastly, I hope you like the new blog layout, and blog banner at the top of the page. It took quite a while editing the HTML settings for my template! Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, and happy birdwatching :)

Looking for insects

I am pleased to say that the Great Tit which we saw visit our nest box last week, has returned today. Our camera nest box, which has now been up for a couple of weeks, has certainly attracted lots of attention. Below is the video of this morning's capture. The Great Tit takes some time to come into the box, as it taps away at the hole for quite a while at the start.

Hopefully, you were able to view the video fine. I was really happy with the sound quality of the video, especially when the Great Tit is tapping away at the hole of the box. Again, the video is in colour, although it may look black and white. I have now changed the settings of the camera, so that the video quality should now be clearer.

It looks to be the same Great Tit which we saw visit the box before, although I have heard a second Great Tit calling just outside the nest box. In fact, we already appear to have a Great Tit pair visiting the garden, and the one which is visiting the box, looks to be a female, due to its thinner black stripe on its front. Its amazing to think that these birds are already paired up, ready for the spring ahead.

This Great Tit may have been looking for somewhere to nest next spring, but I reckon that, this time, the bird was looking for insects in the box. Notice the way it pecks around at the drainage holes at the bottom of the box, where insects might be. Hopefully, we will see some more visitor to the box soon.

Elsewhere in the garden, I have seen our Goldcrest again. It was flitting around in our conifer tree again, and presumably, it was looking for insects too. Its visits are quite regular now, and I'm hoping that it will give me the opportunity to take its photograph. They are so very tiny, so its difficult to even follow the bird, let alone take a photo of it.

That's all for today's post, although, should we get any more nest box visitors today, I will upload the videos to this posting later on. Have a great weekend :)

What's caught my eye today?

Its been a while since I posted about our garden's plants, so I thought I would post about what plants have been catching my eye over the last week or so. And for my 100th posting today, I will start with some lilies which have just flowered in our pond...

They really have been adding some colour to our garden at this time of year. Most of our other plants have already flowered and are now "closing down" for the autumn and winter ahead. In the bottom right photo in the montage above, you will notice that some of the flowers are still yet to appear. Hopefully, the frost which we apparently could be getting tonight will not damage these lilies or anything else which happens to be flowering at the moment.

I did notice that many of our plants are losing their leaves now, especially our Apricot Tree. Just next to our pond, we have a little Blueberry plant, and the leaves from this have turned a brilliant purple-red colour. Presumably, it won't be long until our blackcurrant bushes lose their leaves too. Notice the lonely Blueberry still left on the plant!

The birds are still feeding pretty frantically, and I have been very happy to see a Goldcrest again twice, which we last saw earlier in the year. I haven't been lucky enough to get a photo of it yet, although it has allowed me to get very close. Its very difficult to follow the tiny bird as it flits through the needles of the conifer. Another small bird which has been visiting again recently is the Long-Tailed Tit, which we see more and more of nowadays.

As usual, the LTT's visit with the Blue and Great Tits, and just recently, we have also seen the return of the Coal Tit to our garden. Today, I saw a Blue Tit on our fat block feeder by the Apricot Tree. I haven't seen any more visitors inside our camera nest box today, although we have been hearing the birds tapping at the entrance hole and calling to one another.

We have also had groups of around 9-10 Goldfinches visiting our feeders too. When I am outside though, they tend to gather on a nearby tree, waiting for me to go back inside before coming in to feed at our feeders.

Hopefully, I will be seeing more of the same as the week goes on. Maybe we will even get a bird roosting in our camera nest box, should the temperature get cold enough. I wonder what your gardens are like at this early stage in autumn. Have a great week :)

Moving house

I am pleased to say that we now have our camera nest box fully up and running and I have it all set up to record any visitors we get. This is a sort of "part 2" to my previous posting, where I explained the new location of our camera nest box. Because of the poor light, I couldn't get a decent photo of the box to show you on my last posting. Well, I went out the next day and took this...

As you can see, the nest box is now quite high up in our apple tree at the end of the garden. It now has a metal protective plate so that predators cannot widen the hole and get at any birds inside the box. I expected this to be a much better location for our birds to nest. However, I did not expect to see such a quick response from the birds. We got our first visitor to the new box just a couple of days after we moved it.

Yep, a Blue Tit had a quick look inside our camera nest box just yesterday. I really wasn't expecting this, so I blindly starting recording the box, only to realise that I hadn't changed the settings so that it would be in colour! Annoyingly, I now have a black and white video of a Blue Tit visiting the box. I was still very happy to see it. I have decided not to upload this video, however, I did change the settings so that it would be ready for another visit.

What a surprise it was this morning to hear a tapping noise on the hole of the nest box just minutes after I had turned my computer on at 8:45 this morning. Because I can't see the nest box from the house, I had no idea what the bird would be, although I suspected it could be another Blue Tit. How wrong I was! I was thrilled to see a Great Tit pop into the box. I hit the record button, and this is what I saw...

This video is in fact in colour (although it may look like its in black and white). The reason for this is that it wasn't very light in the garden at this time, so the colour is dulled. As usual, the quality of video you will see will not be as high as the quality I will be able to view. Listen out for the Great Tit calling in the video too.

Hopefully, this will be the first of many visits to our camera nest box through the winter :) I'll be checking for any roosters tonight. Fingers crossed for that. Have a great weekend (whats left of it)!

Miserable

The title of this post may be depressing, but so has the weather we have had today. Since I left the house for school this morning, it has rained non-stop. It really was horrible. But it was nice to come home today to find a parcel for me.

Before I blab on about what the parcel was, you ought to know this first: Last weekend, we took down our camera nestbox from the wall of our house. I have been planning on moving the box to the end of the garden for some time now and, for several reasons. Firstly, we have plans to build a small kitchen extension on the house next year, and, with our nestbox on the wall of the house, I thought that this could well ruin the chances of our box being used for nesting. The box also needed to have a quick clean-out to remove all wood shavings.

After the photo below was taken, I added a metal protective plate to the hole of the nestbox to prevent it from being damaged by predators.

So, we moved the box to the end of the garden in a pretty well-hidden place in the hope that we might get any roosters for the winter. Trouble is, that the camera cable wasn't long enough to go from the house to the box. This is where the parcel comes in. Phew, glad I got that explaining out of the way. The parcel contained a cable extension. I went outside in the rain after school with the cable extension to connect it all up. It really was wet work.

By the time I was finished, the weather had got worse and it was getting darker, so I was unable to take a photo of the new location of the box. I think I will post again tomorrow with a photo inside and outside the box. Finishing off on a happier note, the forecast for tomorrow is brilliant. Wahay ;)

Garden update

We have really had plenty of action in our garden recently. On Thursday, I went out to take a few photos of the birds, who have been feeding frantically recently. The finches are arriving in large numbers at the moment, as are the sparrows, but the first bird I saw on Thursday was this cheeky little Blue Tit...

Also seen were these sparrows at the other feeding station in our garden.

Some of you may remember that we created a small pond in our garden, in the hope that the wildlife in our garden would use it. The pond now looks much more a part of the garden than it used to and really fits in well where it currently is. Below is a photo of the pond as it was when we first created it.

We added some pond weed and plants to surround it. Below is a photo of what the pond looks like now.

However, whilst the pond might look a lot better and attract more wildlife now, we have found that there is a bit of a problem with it. The pond appears to be leaking water into the soil. We have to fill up the pond once every day or two, which really isn't right. The pond is quite shallow, so we originally thought that the water was just evaporating away. But just recently, the weather has been cooler and yet the pond is leaking just as much as before. At some point, we may have to create this pond again so that it stops leaking.

Enough of that for now. In the last few weeks, we have seen glimpses of a little Wood Mouse in our garden shed. I have no idea how it got inside, or when but its definitely made its presence known. My Dad first saw the mouse as he opened the top drawer in a chest of drawers in our shed last week amongst loads of shredded paper. I think it may have been starting to nest! Below are the photos of the drawer. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a photo of the mouse.

A view of the draw with the shredded paper...

I even found that part of a fat block for the birds being stored in the shed had been nibbled by the mouse! See the picture below.

Hope you all had a great weekend :)

Summer memories

I thought I would post a couple of photos which I took in the summer in my Grandma's garden. I completely forgot about these few photos, and it was only until recently that I came across them again. Her garden was really colourful at the time, and the flowers were all out. In the summer sun, it looked brilliant...

As you can see from the photos, the flowers look stunning. They were on an arch at the end of the garden. The bees were loving them too. I think these are the only real decent photos I have taken of the bees. Sometimes, it is only when you look at the photos on the computer that you realise if the photo is any good. I'm not sure of the ID of the flowers, so any help on that would be great.

Its difficult to imagine what her garden looks like now in the autumn, without the bright colours which we saw in the summer. Because of the time of year, not much bird life was to be seen around her garden, except a few Dunnocks and Woodpigeons. Maybe the birds have started to visit her feeders again now that the days are cooler and shorter.

At home, we have really seen a lot of action on the bird feeders recently, and we have had to fill them up very regularly. Hopefully, our camera nestbox will be re-located to the end of the garden soon in case we get any roosting Blue or Great Tits as the weather gets cooler. I may soon talk of a certain visitor to our garden shed recently too.

Slugs and snails by night

A couple of weeks ago, when I went outside to feed our rabbits one evening, soon after it had rained, I noticed a large number of slugs and snails on the ground. I went back inside to get my camera and went back outside again. I took the photos below:

It was quite strange to see such a large group of them, even on a rainy night. It was hard to avoid standing on them as they were all on the garden path. Some of them had some really interesting colours too.

I know this has been the first post in a while, but with the good weather we are promised for the rest of this week, hopefully I can do some garden birdwatching. Around our area, the birds have been feeding fairly consistantly throughout the summer and the feeders haven't really been quiet at all recently. One last note: sorry for not commenting and visiting your blogs as much as usual recently. I will get back to it.

A butterfly first

The butterflies and bees really seem to be doing well in our garden this year. I have seen plenty of them, and a couple of new varieties recently. Last week, I luckily spotted a small butterfly in the garden from the house. I went outside to find that it was a Common Blue, one that we haven't seen in our garden before...

Also seen around was the Gatekeeper butterfly, which we see most years (pictured below). Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of it with its wings open.

Also seen were Large White and Red Admiral. Large White butterflies appear to be everywhere at the moment. Both butterflies pictured above particularly liked the Marjoram flowers. However, other flowers seem to be appearing everywhere (most of which were not planted by us). I took photos of some of them and they are below. The first photo shows a thistle flower which seems to be particularly popular with the bees.

I'm not sure what the flower in the photo below is but it really looked brilliant in the afternoon sun. In the background, you can see the red-orange flowers of the bean plants.

The Veronica plant seems to be very healthy at the moment. And finally, a quick note on the birds. The feeders have been very busy recently, especially with the tits and sparrows. Today, I saw 10 sparrows feeding on the lawn, which is the most we have ever seen in our garden. Also, Blue, Great, Long-tailed and Coal Tits have been seen frantically feeding. Maybe they are stocking up ready for when they moult? I will leave you with a photo of a pair of Blue Tits which were acrobatically feeding at the end of the garden.

Sunny or not, have a great week :)