What birds do you get in your garden

We've had a new one to us this week a Dunnock.Very shy just shuffling between shrubs in the garden and occasionly getting titbits below the feeder.
Taken with a very shaky handheld 300mm lens
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We also get Dunnocks they are very shy... ours sometimes will feed off a tray on a very low wall but usually they just go between the bushes picking up whatever they can find.
 
I used to crunch up suet balls with a hammer and put them on a bit of a paving slab for the blackbirds etc but it attracted rats so I don,t do that anymore.

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Leftlegger said:
I used to crunch up suet balls with a hammer and put them on a bit of a paving slab for the blackbirds etc but it attracted rats so I don,t do that anymore.
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The amount of birds we have visiting there is no food left by mid afternoon.....we did used to get a little harvest mouse come occasionally but we haven’t seen it recently.....our neighbours across the stream have a cat so it may have eaten our little harvest mouse:frowny:
 
SpeedyDux said:
Fewer garden birds this year. That's a direct consequence of the new neighbours at the back having all the trees (mainly conifers) removed from the bottom of their garden. My privacy is gone too. Whatever I plant now will take years to fill the gap.

These days, it's mostly corvids seen in the garden. Jackdaws, Magpies, and an occasional Rook. They pick moss of the roof looking for insects. Bits of moss all over the patio.

Some Sparrows and mixed Tits on the feeders. Not much else apart from a few dopey Woodpigeons and Collared Doves who come for seeds spilled on the ground.

The resident small flock of Starlings (30 at its peak) still comes for a daily breakfast of mealworms and suet sprinkles. They are much warier, having been predated by visiting Sparrowhawks. Luckily the neighbours on both sides have some trees where they can hide.
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CRickey - I could have written that (nearly) about my back garden/neighbours. add marauding seagulls and fewer sparrows And a variety of tits. Piggins and doves yes, sparrow hawk no. I have posted this elsewhere but anyway - I am a bit higher up the hill and now I can see right into their kitchen - serves them right!
 
We get all the birds that are around in our ‘garden’......it’s a giiiiiig garden.....as big as the world if we want it to be.
I don’t employ a gardener but there are plenty of them about!
 
I did the Jan bird watch this year, and submitted a video via an email. It didnt happen on the bird watch hour window, but the good lady had shouted me through to kitchen a few weeks earlier.
She saw one of our family of 5 Magpies feeding along side the spuggies, Blue tits and Robins.
I had my phone so was away to take a pic.
Then our resident sparrow hawk swooped in and caught a sparrow. It took the sparrow to the ground right in front of the kitchen window, and we watched it slowly squeeze the life out the poor wee bugger. We could see and hear it chirping away more slowly and slowly till it stopped.
It was a really quite a thing to see in the back garden.
I have tried to see if it is on the site but cant find it. I thought I was taking pics but it was on video.
Makes you think about wildlife photographers waiting days on end to get the snap.
 
Jackdaws from neighbours chimney who steal all the bird food, pigeons walking around the lawn to stupid to look on the bird table, starlings eating what the jackdaws miss.
 
It's good to keep birds in the garden as a part of a member of the garden. But have you ever thought about the pests that might get attracted towards birds and their eating? One of my cousins is also fond of keeping many of pests at home such as rats, birds, mouse etc.. but at a certain duration of time, these pests become a nuisance to her, as they were damaging the plants and other things in the garden and at home. So to avoid this she contacted the pest Exterminator Bronx NY for keeping the rest of the unwanted pests out of home and garden.
 
I've been watching a big Sparrowhawk devouring a pigeon at the bottom of the garden for nearly 2 hours. The neighbour has let her 2 dogs out to play so the Sparrowhawk has just left. I hope it ate enough not to have to kill again.

Next step is to bag the remains of the pigeon and vacuum as many feathers as I can before the rain arrives.
 
Where are the birds? Normally at this time of year have seen as many as 23 Blue Tits feeding or queuing up. Haven't seen a single bird other than Robins. There seems to be plenty of larger birds, Crows, Wood Pigeon Woodpecker and get daily visits of Pheasant and French Grouse on the lawn. But no Blackbird, Tits, Chaffinch, Thrush, Wagtail, Tree Creeper. Which have all been in an abundance every spring. Also not so many squirrels. Saw on face book a picture of hundreds of dead birds on the roadside of the M25. Anyone know anything?

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Merryman said:
Where are the birds? Normally at this time of year have seen as many as 23 Blue Tits feeding or queuing up. Haven't seen a single bird other than Robins. There seems to be plenty of larger birds, Crows, Wood Pigeon Woodpecker and get daily visits of Pheasant and French Grouse on the lawn. But no Blackbird, Tits, Chaffinch, Thrush, Wagtail, Tree Creeper. Which have all been in an abundance every spring. Also not so many squirrels. Saw on face book a picture of hundreds of dead birds on the roadside of the M25. Anyone know anything?
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I take it the french grouse was a red legged partridge , I only ever seen one in the garden 2 years ago ,
it’s gone now , but all my usual birds are here

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If we can count "flying over" then I have a new one for this garden - shag (there's a breeding colony about half a mile away and I've seen them over the marsh but not DIRECTLY over the garden I think!)
 
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CWH said:
If we can count "flying over" then I have a new one for this garden - shag (there's a breeding colony about half a mile away and I've seen them over the marsh but not DIRECTLY over the garden I think!)
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I think "seen from" the garden counts. On this basis I counted a Merlin yesterday.


Sadly, only a Merlin helecopter. :(
 
I better tell our resident pigeon to watch out. We named him fat frank because he waddles around the garden and just about clears the wall when he takes off. He struggles and sometimes only makes it to the wall and rests. Haha

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We have a resident squadron of hedge sparrows starlings and blackbirds occasionally we get a visitor.
This morning when the solar fountain started running a male blackbird was sat in the bottom with water running over him. He was there for half an hour.
The sparrows normally use the fountain leaving the bigger birds to the bird bath.
 
The last couple of weeks we've had short-eared owls - probably because of the emergence of over-sized voles (why THEY are around I couldn't begin to guess - except maybe because the owls weren't so busy last year?)
Anyhow, seen over the front of the house but the photo by a neighbour - probably 2 males fighting over a female or over territory:
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