Starlings splashing about

-- NOTE - This post was done in March 2012, but I have posted it so it appears as having been published on the 3rd May 2011 --

Around the time where we had a pair of blue tits nesting in our camera nest box, the garden was also very busy elsewhere. The selection of photos below shows a starling paying a visit to our garden in early May. I actually used a few of the photos for in of my A-level photography projects last year.

Anyway, here they are. For some of these pictures, I have fiddled with them slightly in Photoshop Elements, just to enhance them a little...

The starling disappeared for a while and this magpie took the opportunity to take a dip...

But the starling was back about 10 minutes later, but wanted a bath this time

... And take off!

That's all for now, have a great day :)

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!

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!

Norfolk birds

So, here I am posting about our family holiday to Norfolk which I have just come home from. We stayed in a nice cottage in northern Norfolk (rather near where Springwatch is currently being filmed at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve this week). The variety of wildlife seen around the garden and grounds of the cottage was amazing. I think I will share my Norfolk wildlife and plant sightings over at least 2 posts. The grounds of the cottage were amazing. My favourite part of the grounds was the small lake pictured below.

Pretty much as soon as we went into the back garden of the cottage for the first time, we saw Blue Tits were nesting in a small hole in a wall. The adults were seen flying in and out of the hole with insects all the time and it was difficult to follow. This activity was constant until later on in the week when the Blue Tits stopped feeding the young. We think that they must have fledged, although we have not seen any fledglings around. Of course it is possible that the nest was predated but the hole was too small for anything large to get in and take the young. The picture below shows the hole.

Also nesting nearby, but in the grounds of the cottage rather than the back garden were Goldcrests. In a conifer tree, a pair of Goldcrests were rearing young in a tiny nest on the end of the branch. The young looked very close to fledgling when I saw them on the first day of the holiday. It looked like there were 2 or 3 chicks crowded inside the nest. One of them decided to exercise his/her wings outside the nest, before returning to the nest cup. I just managed to get a picture before it hopped back inside the nest, which is seen in the top left image of the photo montage below. The nest was empty the next day so I am assuming they have fledged.

Other fledglings that were seen around were Great Tit (main picture in montage) and Coal Tit (bottom left photo in montage).

Also nesting in the garden of the cottage were Blackbirds who had built a nest high up in a shrub. Unfortunately, while the male was around, it only appeared to be the female who was feeding the chicks. Nevertheless, the female came in frequently with mouthfulls of insects.

The first picture below is of the female perched on the garden wall about to fly into the nest. The second photo is of the nest, which I managed to take a quickly and quietly. If you look carefully, you should be able to see the beaks of a couple of chicks. Maybe they will fledge next week. The photos were taken this morning before we left.

A flock of 15-20 Long-tailed Tits visited the garden twice and were very entertaining. They always look busy and never seem to stop. These little birds were flitting around the branches of a tree in the garden. I love the way they follow each other around. The biggest flock we have seen in our garden at home was made up of around 10 or 11 birds, so I was impressed to see such large numbers in Norfolk. I got a few photos of the tiny birds in action.

In the lake in the grounds of the cottage were Mute Swan cygnets and Egyptian Goose goslings. The cygnets were very closely watched by the adults and any threats to the cygnets were scared away very quickly. Also on the lake were Tufted Ducks and Mallards. The Egyptian Geese were often seen sat on the edge of the lake in the sun. The goslings were still quite small and were seen huddled together looking like a pile of feathers.

My highlight bird-wise in the grounds has to be the Barn and Tawny Owls that were seen flying around in the evening. A few evenings during the week, we walked to the barn near the lake to watch the Barn Owls. I think the Barn Owl must be roosting in the barn at the moment. We have seen it come out of the barn in the evening to hunt over the surrounding fields. I don't think they have young yet as they didn't return to the barn with any food.

Barn Owls are such incredible creatures and it was fantastic to see such good views of them as they hunted silently in the dark. We only saw the Tawny Owl once, but heard it much more often. They could well be roosting or nesting nearby too. Also seen near the barn were bats in large numbers. We also saw a Treecreeper one evening just as it was going dark on a tree near the barn.

Away from the cottage, we saw plenty of other birds. National Trust properties often have gardens that are fantastic for birds. We went to Felbrigg Hall, a National Trust property near the cottage. Click here for the link to the website. As I was looking around the gardens, I came across a House Sparrow terrace nestbox in use by a Great Tit. It was seen bringing food into one of the holes.

A Chaffinch was seen singing on a tree.

And Jackdaws were seen at another NT property, Blickling Hall. Click here for more information on the property.

Many other birds were seen on various walks throughout the week. On the beach near a town called Sheringham, Little Tern were seen at the shore. I had to check the bird book to make sure they weren't Common or Sandwich Tern. They certainly were little and were struggling to fly against the wind. Just slightly further along the coast near some cliffs, I saw a species of pipit. This bird, I was unable to identify even with the bird book. I am guessing it was either a Rock Pipit, or more likely due to its brighter outer tail feathers, a Meadow Pipit.

Also seen in Sheringham were Starling:

And finally, on a sunny walk in the countryside, a female sparrow on the roof of a house. It's great to see the declining House Sparrow in its well-known habitat.


Other bird highlights were: Nuthatch, Marsh Harrier (seen at Blakeney Point), Reed Bunting, Whitethroat, Meadow Pipit, Yellowhammer, Chiffchaff, Cuckoo and Great Spotted Woodpecker. Blimey, isn't it amazing what you can see in a week!

Finally this posting comes to an end. I did chatter a bit didn't I?

Fledgling Starlings to come

Recently, we bought some live mealworms for the birds, thinking it would be helpful for any nesting birds to feed to their chicks. Well, we have certainly had a positive response from the local Starlings. They have been flying off with beakfulls of mealworms for a couple of weeks now. I think that there are at least 4 adult starlings flying off with food to feed chicks. With the frenzied feeding, I am sure it won't be long until we see some fledglings.

A while back, we got a couple of plastic green mealworm feeders with little covers and steep sides. Before this, we were always trying to find somewhere A) protected from the weather, and B) somewhere they couldn't simply crawl off. As a result, many of the mealworms we wasted. It seems that now, the problem has been solved and the mealworms have been disappearing fast.

The Starlings have been seen deliberately spilling the mealworms onto the lawn so that they can collect them more easily. The video below shows a Starling collecting some mealworms and flying off with them. Note how the Starling quickly flies off with the mealworms before the second starling is able to take any! I was so lucky with the way one Starling replaced the other when recording the video.



Another ineteresting sighting in the garden has been a juvenile Dunnock. I also managed to get a clip of this too, albeit a short one. After watching this clip a few times, I thought the juvenile Dunnock could in fact be a very scruffy adult Dunnock. See what you think. I must say though that the Dunnock does appear to beg for food from the parent. This "youngster" appears to be able to feed itself, so I don't think it is a recent fledgling.



Now, I also wanted to talk about a very strange encounter in the garden yesterday. In the late afternoon, I saw a small flock of Long-tailed Tits visit the garden. Fairly normal so far, then. But I then saw a pair of the little birds hanging around near our conservatory nestbox. To my surprise, they actually entered the nestbox for a short time. I have certainly not seen this kind of behaviour before from this bird, although I know that Long-tailed Tits are beginning to exploit food from a wider range of feeders. When you look at the list of birds which use an ordinary tit box, the Long-tailed Tit is not part of the list. It would be great if the little birds visited the box again at some point, and maybe even thought about a late nesting attempt there.

To finish off, below are a couple of pictures of Collared Doves seen in the garden recently They seem to have learned how to feed off our bird feeders now!

Hopefully I will see some more fluffy youngsters over the coming weeks.

Fat is in fashion!

At the moment, our fat balls and blocks are particulary popular with the birds. We have had Long-tailed Tits, Blue Tits, Blackbirds, Starlings, Robins and Magpies. The Long-tailed Tits are very entertaining, and I saw 10 all crowd around the fat ball feeder. I find it quite amusing that they scavenge for the last few crumbs of fat. It is good that they are visiting and I hope they are here to stay! We recently bought a fat block, which had all gone within 2 days, mostly because of the Blackbirds. The strange thing is that, normally, the fat products are more popular in winter, but there are no signs of this at the moment.
The picture below shows what I think is a young blackbird, judging by its unusually light plumage. The females are slightly darker than this.

Garden update

I'm glad I can now post something with some of my own images and videos. The feeders are quite busy at the moment, but larger birds such as Magpies and Wood Pigeons are taking over. The hanging bird table on our feeder pole, and the fat are particularly popular with the Magpies. They are also keen on the peanuts I left loose on the table. I have to admit that they are very entertaining to watch, but they are very intimidating to smaller birds, such as Blue Tits. When the large birds have gone, the smaller ones take advantage, and take as much food as quickly as possible. As I was outside, I noticed the return on the Starlings in our garden. They had a nibble at the fat balls before disappearing.

Male Greenfinch and female House Sparrow:

Young Robin: Collared Dove: Junenile Goldfinch: Starling:

Goldfinch:

Blackbird:

Magpie:

House Sparrow video:

Blue Tit and Coal Tit taking brief snack from feeders: