Garden changes

Our garden is really looking different now to what it did in the summer. It is now mid-November and autumn is well underway. I like to see autumn as the time when the garden is preparing itself for a potentially cold winter to come. Our garden is definately showing signs of this and I couldn't resist taking pictures of the brilliant colours our garden has to offer at the moment.

One of the most obvious changes is the falling of leaves from the trees in the garden. We have an apple tree and an apricot tree in our garden, and it is very interesting to see the differences in the colours of leaves from these 2 trees. The apricot tree leaves turn a brilliant yellow colour at this time of year, where the apple tree leaves turn a browny-orangy colour. I must say that I prefer the apricot tree for its colour. If only it produced more than about 5 apricots per year in the summer! I took the photos of the apricot tree a week or so ago and now pretty much all the leaves have fallen off now.

The leaves falling off the trees mean that it is a lot easier to see the birds. Our apricot tree is a very popular place for the Coal, Blue and Great tits to break up the sunflower hearts in the feeder. The birds probably feel safer in our evergreen conifers at the end of the garden at this time of year. Dunnocks are birds that also use the trees for cover and I have been able to see them a lot more recently. The conifers do look a bit out of place at the moment too, where everything else is changing colour.

One of my favourite colours in our garden at this time of year is the red-orange colour of the Goosberry plant leaves. They really stood out, and I thought it looked nice with the blurred bird table in the background. We only have one of these plants, so again, in the summer we don't get much fruit from them.

The colour really makes up for it though and makes the plant look amazing. Another berry plant in the garden is the Blackcurrant plant. This has spread over the years, and now is a large feature in the garden. The colours that this plant produce are very different to that of the Goosberry bush. The leaves appear "washed out". The photo is above. The last fruit bush I am going to talk about is the Rasberry one. This produced similar colours to the Goosberry plant, as you can see from the red and pink in the photo below.

I wonder what all your gardens look like at this time of year. Our garden probably varies greatly to all of yours.

A crisp autumn morning

And a walk around my garden to get photos of visiting birds. I say that its autumn but the weather isn't agreeing. It has been warm and sunny for about a week here now. Even if you go outside with the garden birds, some of the tamer visitors will say a good morning to you. Especially the Robin in the photos below. Its nice to see these visitors in the morning and to hear their song. The Robin especially has a very distinctive song that is recognised by gardeners all over the UK. There is no match for the sight of a Robin sat on a favourite perch singing his/her heart out. These one was very friendly and sat on a fence post at the end of our garden while I took pictures.


This Robin took a bite to eat after I filled the bird feeders up. As always they are the first birds to return after I have filled up. I should get up early one day and watch the birds. I am sure that there are some rarer species visit at this time. I did do this once and I saw a Bullfinch feeding briefly. People have recommended the dawn chorus too but this I haven't done. I am sure that the Robin would be one of the features of this.

In this country the Robin is a very friendly bird that will happily feed near man. But on Wikipedia earlier I found that actually they are quite timid on the continent. You learn a new thing every day! Soon, I should get some more mealworms for the Robins to feed on. They love them and they are great for the juveniles. The only problem is that I am struggling to find a place to put them so that A) they don't get rained on and B) the larger birds don't take them all.

The Blue Tit is another bird I saw this morning. They are a bit more elusive than the Robin above, but will still quite happily take seed from the feeders while I am out. They are very active and although they are very common they can be difficult to photograph. I find that when the Blue Tits feed, other members of the tit family follow suit, as did the Great Tits this morning. They make a harsher noise than the Robins but its nice nonetheless. Around our area the Blue Tits fly around in flocks, flying from feeding station to feeding station.

Autumn "officially" starts in late September and finishes in November . I think this seems about right so far this year. The first leaf has fallen from our apricot tree and the apples in the apple tree are dropping to the ground too. The falling leaves are the stereotypical signs that autumn has begun. In previous years this has been quite inconsistent with poor summers and sunny autumns. But certainly in our garden autumn has begun!

The Blue Tit was very neat. They must have just finished moulting. It won't be too long before we start seeing some frantic pairing up and nest site investigation from these little birds. They won't look like this for too long!

I realise that I haven't really posted much about plants recently. I do have something lined up though. The birds have been spending a lot of time at our feeders recently so I thought I would focus on them a bit more. What is it like in your garden this autumn? I reckon that this part of the UK is a bit further ahead of Northern England and Scotland. Finally I will leave you with couple of the autumn pictures I took today. Enjoy!

Blue Tit and Robin photographs were taken in my garden on 27/09/08. Yellow leaf and rotting apple pics were taken on 28/09/08.