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 :)