Chiffchaff on its way back?

After the last couple of days' cold weather, the birds were feeding frantically this morning. All the usual suspects were around, but a couple of interesting sightings too. One of these was a goldcrest, a bird which we do occasionally see on colder days. I wonder if it was the same bird we saw last year. I'd like to think it survived this years' harsh winter.I didn't manage a photo, as it was right at the end of the garden in the conifer tree.

The other bird I saw today was a chiffchaff- a garden first. It was flying around with the sparrows around the bird bath, so it was hard to spot at first. But it was much more active and more colourful than the sparrows so I looked through the binoculars, and realised it was a chiffchaff. I somehow managed to get my camera out and get a record shot through my bedroom window before it disappeared.

I'm guessing this bird was on its way back to Africa when it stopped by in our garden this morning. It wasn't there for long, but I'd like to think our garden bird bath and feeders will help that chiffchaff on its migration south!

We've had plenty of juvenile woodpigeons in the garden recently, like the one in the photo below:

I managed to clean out our camera nest box and re-adjust the camera today. Even though we had no nesting birds this year, a great tit pair began to build a nest, so there was a bit of moss on the nest box floor, and also some insects, so it was definitely worth cleaning it out. We had a great tit visit the box a week ago, so hopefully we will have a rooster this year.

Rutland Water birds

Whilst on holiday in the Rutland area between the 7th and 14th of August, we visited Rutland Water for some birdwatching. I hadn't been before, and beforehand I was told that ospreys could be seen there. We wandered round the hides to see what we could see, but first, I set up my camera in the visitor centre of Rutland water to get some photos of various birds.

Amongst the usual species you'd expect to see at a feeding station, we saw some Tree Sparrows, a bird which I hadn't seen before. I knew what I was looking for though so they were easy to spot, and very different from House Sparrows. I know that this bird is currently in strong decline, so it really was great to see them so close up.

Sorry, but basically all of the photos I have taken are record shots. I still think its worth sharing them though...

We then wandered round to the Opsrey hide. Whilst walking there, I was amazed to see a Weasel run right across the path in front of me. I really was so lucky to see one so close. I was unable to get a photo as it was there for only 5 seconds or so. When we first got to the hide, we saw everything but Ospreys...

The first bird I saw was an adult water rail, just in front of the hide. It looked like perfect habitat for the bird. None of my photos were particularly great, but I was still happy to get at least a few decent photos.

It was great to also see a juvenile water rail too...

Other birds such as this sedge warbler could also be seen from the hide (please excuse the record shot):

And another record shot of a reed bunting:

Eventually, we saw the ospreys from the hide, a couple of hours after we had got there- they spend much of their time flying around the lake out of view from the hide. The 3 juveniles which fledged the nest earlier in the year still used the nest as a perch and spent plenty of time sitting on it whilst the adults were out catching fish. By now, the ospreys will have started to migrate back to Africa. If you want to follow the osprey diary, click here. Here is my record shot of the osprey nest with the fledged juveniles sitting on it. The third juvenile was on a perch to the left of the nest, which cannot be seen in the photo below.

It really was great to see the ospreys here, along with the other people in the hide, especially since, despite their recent increase in numbers, they are still quite a rare sight in the UK. The nest really was too far away to get a close up photo with my camera, but I sharpened the photo on the computer to make the scene a bit clearer. Whilst looking for the flying adult opsreys (which we did see, but I was unable to photograph), lapwings could be seen flying fairly close to the hide.

I liked the effect I managed to get on this photo, despite the fact it wasn't intentional. Since we were so glued to the opsrey hide, we ran out of time and were unable to visit any of the other hides - maybe next time, eh?

Bird updates

Unfortunately, a bit of bad news on the bird front in our garden recently. About a month ago, we found that the robin nestbox at the end of the garden had fallen off its tree. A pair of robins had built a nest and layed eggs without us even noticing before the box fell off the tree, and the eggs were smashed It really is incredible how secretive the birds must have been to build a nest without us seeing birds enter the box once...

Whilst this nest has been a failure, I'm guessing this robin pair have nested again somewhere else successfully. We have a couple of young robins in the garden so they must have already had one brood earlier on in the year.

The birds have generally been feeding quite frequently recently, robins included. One of the species which has visited a lot has been the greenfinch, which has been good to see, because over the last 2 or 3 years we have generally seen fewer of them.

The greenfinches have been sharing the feeders very nicely though, and other birds like Blue Tits have been coming in to feed too.

Blackbirds have also been fairly frequent, and this female has been around all year. She seems to have distinctive markings...

The male blackbirds have been visiting too...

The video below shows a video of a greenfinch and a blue tit feeding together.

Over the last few weeks, I've been having problems loading my posts on blogger, so I've been unable to finally get this post done until now.