Birds in your garden

Garden birds around feeders

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I have a Robin that lives in a tree next door to me. sadly i have not seen much of anything else this year other than pidgeons.:shake:
 
It's as manic as usual in my garden this year. If anyone knows of a good Starling filter then please let me know.
 
All in all, I'd say we are up on last year, certainly we have more species coming in this year than last, but that maybe because the house has only been built since 2009, and so we are getting known by the local feathered beings.
The list so far this year is, Great, Blue, Marsh and Long Tailed Tits. Green finches, House Sparrows, Dunnocks, Goldfinches, Chaffinches, Blackcaps, Nuthatches, Wrens, Robins, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Collared Doves, Turtle Doves, Hoopoes, Redstarts, Wood pigeons, Cirl Buntings, Pied Wagtails, Siskins (far fewer and later than usual), and last but by no means least, Bramblings.

And all this despite having 6 cats in the garden, mind you, the bird feeder trees are discretely fenced so that the cats can't get too near them and the birds do seem to realise they safe on the ground inside the fence but not outside, We do lose the odd one, but it is very rare. Also the cats get shot with a large water pistol if we see them stalking the birds so they don't really bother them too much :D
 
bit rubbish this year tbh, way down on starlings, pretty much the only ones I've seen are the ones that are nesting above my window and weirdly despite the rubbish weather they have just had a second brood so can only assume they prefer the wet cool weather for breeding. Not that many sparrows either and the thrushes have totally vanished which is annoying as it was fun watching them eat snails.

Have had lots of blackbirds though especially juvies which let you get nice and close which is good and the pigeons and doves are doing fine as are the local sparrow hawks or as I call them the brown blurs of commotion :LOL:.

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Autumn seems to have started a bit early up my way and and after a fairly quite few weeks the birds are back on the feeders, Mr & Mrs Bullfinch are having breakfast on the sunflower hearts most mornings.
Ltt, Great tit, Goldfinch and Greenfinches are all back :)
 
I have great success on the feeders in my garden a whole range of birds all year round with an increase in the winter.....I feed a wide range of seeds and feeds a firm favourite is sponge cake too along with sunflower hearts popular......I live on the edge of the River Clwyd and get Dipper, Kingfisher all year round and see and photograph them......I also get March tit,GSW,Nuthatches,Spotted Flys.Blckcap,Common Sandpiper plus a whole range of hardbills.......Winter visitors Siskins by the 100's, Brambling and Redpoll.

Tom
 
Got a new setup with vastly more reach so I'm gonna bait up my garden probably tomorrow and see what comes in to pay me a visit. Seen some doves that nest in the area so I wouldn't mind getting a few shots of those.
 
^^^ great shot - I'm waiting for my day when this happens to me (my dad got luck with some similar great shots).

I would however lose the vignetting (IMHO).
 
Mines quiet at the moment but I'm hoping its cause the garden is full of rubbish after I did some building work.
Best I had this year was three jays together but one of them was very nervous so never managed a decent shot of the three together !
 
Fairly normal in the garden this year which is very small with four feeders not much habitat just a lawn and a 10' dead tree I that the feeders are fixed to.

Most common visitors are Sparrows, Goldfinches, Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Great spotted pecker, Blackbirds, plenty of obese Wood pigeons and the usual family of doves No Thrushes this year so far, a pair of red kites seen from the garden fairly regularly over the last three years. Oddly I rarely have taken shots of birds in my garden, weird I know.

As I live in a semi urban area but 100 yards from the river Wye we get many river dwellers flying over head Grey Herons, Cormorants many Types of ducks and Goosanders.

Quite busy I suppose over 24 hour period.
 
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Markvs said:
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Is this a Sparrow Hawk?

On the bird numbers maybe only location but I said to my partner last week there is nearly no birds around this year. Even after a few visits to nature reserves it seems quiet
Click to expand...

Hi Mark...
No, this isn't a Sparrowhawk... it's a falcon.... possibly a Lanner falcon...
 
I have to refill my main feeders every 2 days and the niger seed feeder every 2 weeks. Fat balls can be there for a week or a day depending on who comes in.

I have lots of common sparrows mainly along with a family of gold finches (4), 4 doves, 2pidgeons,2 black birds, 2 blue tits, 2 long tailed tits and a robin.

Of them the gold finches, blue tits and robin nest regularly which I love.
 
thanks Solo and Geoff

On the bird number poll I've now changed my mind. We went and bought a bird feeding station from Pound stretcher for 10 pounds (same one as in Argos at 23), filled it with treats and there has been loads visit
We've now set a camera up on a tripod in the kitchen and take snaps through the window.

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My wife fills the feeders every day and the grey squirrels come and empty them, which mean the birds cannot get a look in. While they have some charm they are also a pain in the rear, other than shooting them any ideas ?; squirrel proof feeders are simply a puzzle to be solved, which usually doesn't take long.
 
This is my first visit to this thread, it's great. I've carried out surveys & CBC's over the years, it's good to see garden bird numbers monitored. My species list is quite mundane. Collared dove, woodpigeon, sparrow hawk! Titmice, blue & coal, but no Great for ages? They used to breed.Blackbird, robin & dunnock; but no song thrush for 5 years+. Goldfinches and wren. The main species is House Sparrow, gladly. With decline in many areas, mine do very well. Todays count was 17 males, 14 females & 15 young birds of the year, 46 in total. Roughly, a 9 % increase on last Oct/Nov. Like my sparrows, i'll become a regular visitor to this site. Thank you.
 
If anything there's more over here, bit different to you guys though!!

Cockatoos, galahs, corollas, lorikeets, rosellas, blue faced honey eaters (breeding out the front :D ), kookaburras, a kingfisher, common koels, pheasant coucal, pigeons (few different kinds), willy wagtail (breeding pair), noisy mynahs (breeding), Indian mynahs (breeding), pee wee birds, a pair of black faced cuckoo shrikes, crows, magpies, finches and I think blue wrens, and three cockatiels who I'm sure are escaped pets!!

I think that's it. We don't have feeders (tonnes of trees) partly because of the four dogs and one cat - but we have bird baths out the front. Are bird numbers over there in a bad way or something?
 
A fly through visit from a male sparrowhawk today, attemting to take something straight off the feeders. Nuthatch which started to visit a couple of months back is still returning. Possibly 5 (3 certain) Coal tits on a regular basis. Also around 15Long Tailed Tits almost daily have been around.

As there is a large pond near to to my house, Moorhens come to the garden in the winter, but the first one paid a visit today. Feeding on spilt sunflower hearts.
 
It's surprisingly mild this week and 10c when i leave for work at 5am, still lots of insects about so the feeders are quiet but 2 Waxwings showed up on the weekend.
 
Very mild here too, suprisingly this morning I had upto 20 greenfinch fighting to get on the feeders. The 2 pairs of bullfinch were also among them too. A very brief visit from a Great spotted woodpecker today, quite shy and was easily spooked. Hopefully it will return. Reasonable numbers of redwing flying over, but very few fieldfare.
 
blackbirds, pigeons, robins and sparrows were the order of the day, but since I've gone to town on the bird feeder I now have the above plus I've seen Jays, GSW, starlings, dunnocks, LTTs, blue tits, great tits and magpies. In Newcastle I used to see a lot of chaffinch but I haven't seen any in the south.
 
btw did anyone see the report of a Bee-eater spotted in Fulwell (Sunderland)?
 
I've only recently added a feeding station to the garden with hopes of being able to get some good shots + feeding our feathered friends of course.
Only getting Sparrows, Starlings, Collared Doves, Wood Pigeons & Magpies at present any tips to encourage other varieties?

I should add that we are on a relatively new development being only 5 years old but are very close to the green belt and countryside!
 
So quite in my garden seeds in the feeder started to sprout and nuts went moldy too.
 
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I've got a nice flock of between 20-30 Goldfinches making the most of the sunflower hearts again now it's got a bit colder.
A small vid i took last year when the snow came.

[YOUTUBE]ySuz3bB6ev4[/YOUTUBE]
 
GF's love the Nyjers !

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Neil B said:
I've got a nice flock of between 20-30 Goldfinches making the most of the sunflower hearts again now it's got a bit colder.
A small vid i took last year when the snow came.

[YOUTUBE]ySuz3bB6ev4[/YOUTUBE]
Click to expand...

nice vid (y) think there's a siskin in the mix as well, great colours
 
Whilst my garden is suburban, it does back onto a wooded area, so I do see some nice birds on occasion. Last year (2012) I had a male Whitethroat visit briefly. I see both male and female Blackcaps, and had a Pied Wagtail visit in this years snow. I also had a brief visit from a Grey Wagtail on the 21/12/12 (no time for a photo for that bird though).

Several photos.

Great Tit.


Great Tit (garden photo).28th-January-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr

One of the three Robins, this one seen here on my garden bench.


Robin on a bench (garden photo). 21st-January-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr

Pair of Goldcrests(huge crop here) I just cant get close enough to them(yet!)


Two Goldcrests in the Oak tree (garden photo). 15th-January-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr

The Pied Wagtail.


Pied Wagtail feeding (garden photo). 18th-January-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr

The male Blackcap on my shed roof, and bottom left is a blurred out of focus male Chaffinch.


Blackcap on the shed roof (garden photo). 18th-January-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr

Edit -

I forgot these Long Tailed Tits


Long tailed Tits (garden photo). 8th-January-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr
 
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