Camera nestbox diary 2009

I have decided to remove my camera nestbox blog, for a couple of reasons. I think the main reason is that many people are unaware of my camera nestbox blog, and, as a result, many people did not see many of the nestbox videos. Now that the videos are merged into my main blog, I think more people will get to see my nestbox videos. I have written this posting as an index for my camera nestbox sightings in 2009. I hope this change works for you too- please mention if it doesn't.

Now that I have deleted my camera nestbox blog, I have decided to copy the postings from it into my main blog (well, the good ones anyway). As you may know, our camera nestbox, which was originally placed on the wall of our house hasn't been occupied this year! We did, however get to see great close-ups of the adult birds as they investigated the box around 5 times.

Below are the links to the postings following our camera nestbox in 2009:

Spring nestbox inspection

• First images
• Will I ever catch them?
• RSPB Garden Birdwatch Posting (includes Blue Tit visit video)
• Blue Tit investigates again
• Blue Tit removes wood shavings
• Both parents visit the box
• Moss in the box
• Blue Tits can't choose which nestbox to use
• Blue Tits choose non-camera nestbox

Winter roosting/inspections

• Great Tit makes early visit after nest box is moved to end of garden
• Great Tit visits again

We have now moved the camera nestbox to an apple tree at the end of the garden soon. This is mostly because we are likely to have building work done on the house next year, which is likely to disrupt the birds. Fingers crossed, we may get roosters in the autumn/winter and even birds nesting in the spring.

One today

Today, as you will see on the little gadget in the sidebar is the one year mark for my blog. I have really enjoyed blogging and sharing my wildlife sightings with all of you. Thanks once again for the Countryfile nomination and for visiting my blog in the last year.

In this posting to round off the blogging year I thought I would include a story of a mammal I was certainly surprised to see recently. As you may know, at the end of our garden is a railway line. Well, on the railway bank last week, my sister spotted some movement from her bedroom window. She pointed it out to me and, through the binoculas we saw a family of foxes!

So, we wandered down the garden for a closer look. I had my camera with me so that I could take any photos. We walked slowly up to the fence to see an adult fox plus 4 playful cubs. The adult watched us whilst the youngsters rolled around without a care in the world. The adult (didn't know whether it was a male or a female) seemed to be ok with me watching about 15 metres away. I got a few photos, but they are blurry because of the poor light. Honest, it was the poor light!

Just record shots but the 1st one is the best.

We watched the youngsters play-fighting (see below), and I couldn't help thinking, "that must hurt"! Again, blurry shots though. It was so great to see such a healthy family playing around. We have seen cubs on the railway bank in previous years, but definitely pre-blog. It could be that I won't see this family again for another couple of months at least. I suspect we will definitely see some more of the adults in the garden in the cold winter looking for any food scraps.

So there it is, 1 year of blogging. I really look forward to year 2, even if it is somewhat disrupted by my exams! Happy blogging and have a good week!

Garden Pond Building

Its now the end of yet another much enjoyed Springwatch series, and I reckon its been one of the best so far. I think its great for encouraging people to make their gardens more wildlife friendly. Recently, my Dad has been working on a little pond for our garden in true Springwatch style. Well, sort-of anyway!

We have wanted a pond in the garden for a while now, for a few reasons. I, for one thought that a pond would be great for the birds to bath and drink from. Whilst we already have a bird bath, a pond encourages ground feeding birds like Blackbirds to visit. Also, over the years, we have seen frogs quite a number of times around the garden, and we thought they might like a pond to live in. I suppose a pond provides habitats for other animals too. I'll look forward to seeing what uses it in the future.

Pond-building is such a great way to attract wildlife to your garden. A pond is also surprisingly easy to create, especially if you build a very small one like ours. I am sure that many of you reading this now probably have a pond already. I must admit that our pond really is tiny (just less than a metre across), but hopefully, it will still make a difference to the garden.

We chose to site our pond next to our blackcurrant, raspberry and Gooseberry bushes, where we had a little bit of spare space. My Dad then dug a hole about a metre in diameter with the middle of the hole being about a foot deep. He then used a stretched out empty bark chippings bag to line the hole. He put a bit of soil on top of the lining to weigh it down. And after the water had been added, the result was this... (see picture below)

After surrounding the outide with pebbles and a couple of plants, the pond is nearly finished. Over the next few weeks, we will plant some more plants, pondweed, etc to make it look a bit more natural. I know that you are thinking "it looks like a muddy pool" when you look at the photo below! The photo below was taken last week and, luckily, it has cleared quite significantly since then!



I have already seen the House Sparrows, Blackbirds, Greenfinches and Woodpigeons take a drink from the pond, which was great to see. Hopefully, when we get some more water plants, it will encourage frogs, etc into the pond at some point, despite its small size. While I'm on the subject, here is a photo of a frog on a low garden wall taken by me last year:


Maybe the chappy in the photo above will be seen in our new pond in the future. I'll keep you posted on any updates. The Alliums have been out a while in our garden now, so I think I'll post the photos of those soon. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

The return of the sparrow

Well its great to see the return of the House Sparrow in our garden. For years, statistics have shown a dramatic decline in the House Sparrow population over the last 30 years. Before a couple of years ago, the sparrow was a rare sight in our garden. Since then, we have seen more visit the garden. Today, its really nice to see a group of around 8 of them hogging the feeder perches for once.

I am thrilled to see at least 4 juvenile sparrows in the garden at the moment along with at least 4 adults. The youngsters have been so entertaining over the last week or so and have caught my attention plenty of times. Whilst I was filling up the feeders a few days ago, the sparrows couldn't resist the idea of feeding on the feeders. Whilst I was out, they allowed me to take a few shots. You can tell that the sparrow in the photo below is a juvenile because of its small size and yellow gape on the beak.

This is probably my favourite photo of the lot (see below). A female sparrow was feeding with her youngsters:
One of the juveniles seemed quite shy and sat in a nearby bush whilst I watched it.
Whilst the make was happy to watch at the top of a shrub.

As I was sat in our little office building, I captured the video below of a male House Sparrow feeding its youngsters. It was great to see them share a perch on the feeder. It did seem a bit strange that the juvenile was reliant on the parent to feed it, despite the fact that the seeds were just next to it. It made me think just how vulnerable these birds are.

It can be quite easy to attract more sparrows to your garden. It appears that the sparrows in our garden prefer seed mixes to the sunflower hearts. I now fill up at least one of our feeders with seed mixes for the House Sparrows. I suppose putting seed mixes out is just one way of attracting sparrows to your garden. Another way to help is to have plenty of water available for them. They sometimes visit our garden just so they can have a quick drink at the bird bath, and it isn't uncommon to see 4 or 5 of them having a wash too.

As many of you will know, you can buy House Sparrow terraced nestboxes with 3 seperate compartments. Unfortunately our box has never been used by House Sparrows, but hopefully, they will use it to nest next year. If you buy one, you may well find that a different bird uses one of the compartments to nest in, as Blue Tits did in ours last year! The sparrows that have visited our garden this year nested in the wall of a house a few doors away from us.

Elsewhere in the garden, birds are visiting our feeders in large numbers. A group of at least 7 Greenfinches have been around in our garden as well as plenty of Chaffinches, Starlings and Woodpigeons. One bird I haven't seen in a while, however is the Coal Tit. I imagine they are probably nesting far away from our garden. The Blue and Great Tits have been providing lots of entertainment though...

This is because we have now seen both Blue and Great Tit fledglings from nests in other gardens. We have also seen some very scruffy parents visiting the peanut feeder. Earlier on this year, when Blue Tits were choosing somewhere to nest, they declined our camera nestbox after visiting several times. They then built a nest in our non-camera nestbox, but moved out of that too, to nest in a garden nearby. It is amazing how fussy they are!

Last, but by no means least, I have also seen a couple of juvenile Starlings about. Not sure this is a good thing, judging by what other bloggers have said about the noise they make!

BBC Countryfile's Blog of the Month

My blog is around 3 weeks away from its first birthday, and its early birthday present was to be chosen as BBC Countryfile magazine's June 09 Blog of the Month. I was thrilled so see the article about Joe's Wildlife Garden in the magazine which I bought today when it came out. HUGE thanks to Countryfile for choosing my blog. Another HUGE thanks to the people who have visited my blog to make it worthwhile me sharing my wildlife encounters.

The editor of the magazine emailed me recently to let me know that my blog had been chosen. In a mad panic to get the magazine today as a family, we somehow managed to buy two copies of the magazine...oops!

I started my blog as a way of recording the wildlife and particularly the birds which visited our garden in Buckinghamshire. Since then, I have started to improve the blog and get some more visitors to the blog. I really like talking to other people about their garden sightings as well as sharing my own, and I suppose that's why I have a garden wildlife blog. In the future, I hope to buy a DSLR camera, which should improve the photos a bit too. It can be difficult with the camera I use at the moment to capture quality photos of birds at a distance.

I think that the Blog of the Month competition is such a great idea, and really spreads the word about blogs that were previously unknown to people. I also found that the rest of the magazine was a great read, and a really good look into the british countryside. And I'm not just saying that because my blog was chosen as their Blog of the Month. It really is a fantastic read, and definitely deserves to sell more copies.

Thanks to you again for visiting and commenting, and to Countryfile magazine for choosing my blog. To nominate your own blog, email the editor of BBC Countryfile magazine (email address in the picture above) with the link to your blog. I think I'll leave this post for at least 2-3 days to give people the chance to read. And after that, I have plenty more posting material. I look forward to posting about our new but very small pond which was created over the weekend.

Happy blogging and have a good week!

June Corncockles

Whilst we were away on holiday in Norfolk plants got, well a bit out of hand in our garden. Weeds had popped up everywhere. But there was one surprise waiting in the garden when we got back...

Yep, the Corncockles which I planted myself have sprung into flower. Even now as I look out into the fading light in the garden, the flowers are still showing their bright colours. I must admit that pink isn't my favourite colour, but they are really a fantastic feature in the garden. I planted quite a few of them in rows and they are very close together. I realise I should have thinned them out before they flowered, but they seem to be doing ok.

I love the way they sway in the wind, as in the photo below:

Some of the flowers were just emerging with the June sun.


I have already seen a couple of bees on the corncockles and hopefully we will see some more, as well as some butterflies over the coming summer months. Moving onto more June colours in the garden, my dad just planted a Lavender shrub and a Veronica shrub. Hopefully, when a bit bigger, they will look a bit more natural and will fit in better with its surroundings. Below is the Lavender:

And a close-up of the flower.

And the Veronica shrub:
Dad's veg seems to be doing well at the moment, despite the best efforts of the local slugs, snails and caterpillars. Lots of watering needed in this hot weather though!


I think its incredible how much our plants have grown in the week we've been away. Over the coming week, I will probably update on our garden birds. If you watched Springwatch today or watched the Springwatch webcams, you will have known that many of the chicks in the nests they were following fledged earlier to try and cool down. It seems that the same behaviour is taking place in our garden when the birds have been visiting our feeders in the evenings to avoid the warm midday sun.

Just a quick note- if you missed any of my Norfolk holiday posts and you would like to read any of them, please click on the links below:

Norfolk holiday birds
Norfolk holiday plants
Norfolk holiday extras

This week, I'm doing work experience out of school at a local ranger service, who help to maintain important wildlife habitats in our area. More on that soon, but for now, have a good week.