Where have all our garden birds gone?

[boxbrownie]

13 hours ago, steve1 said:

Not exactly a garden bird, well not in mine anyway, I saw my first ever Little Egret in a roadside ditch. Alive, I hasten to add. No pic as driving at the time.

 

Didn't realise they cam this far north.

 

steve

Pop down here, a lot in the local tidal river........not seen any Great types yet though, our Doctors car park is a great place to view them from, I always tell the Doc he has the best view from a surgery I know.

[88D]

7 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Pop down here, a lot in the local tidal river........not seen any Great types yet though, our Doctors car park is a great place to view them from, I always tell the Doc he has the best view from a surgery I know.

Depends what he’s looking at, surely? Not all of my body, for example, is good looking. Insert smiley of your choice.

[Captain Cuttle]

Well our starlings are back even with decimated hedge where they lived last year. Ten fighting to get into the watering hole this morning, they love their bathing!

[Flying Pig]

On 11/04/2021 at 19:38, steve1 said:

Not exactly a garden bird, well not in mine anyway, I saw my first ever Little Egret in a roadside ditch. Alive, I hasten to add. No pic as driving at the time.

 

Didn't realise they cam this far north.

 

steve

 

If you're still in the Derwent Valley, Steve, they're pretty numerous around there.  Great white has also been seen in the area.

 

 

My local patch, started in Lockdown 1 last year, reached 53 species in a year and a day with a flythrough peregrine last week.  Today it went up to 54 with a cracking male redstart (just passing through).  It's a smallish piece of mixed farmland between the town and the motorway, so nothing special as habitat.

[Clive Mortimore]

Recent sightings in our garden, a Bullfinch and a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.

 

Since next door moved her four cats here we don't get as many different types of small birds as we use to and the kestrels don't hunt over our paddocks anymore.

There was a feral cat that lived around here, it had a wide territory. Since we moved here three and half years ago other people have moved here with about 10 cats in total. The feral one didn't like all this competition so use to attack the other cats, some needing vet treatment, £££££££. So all the neighbours got together and caught the feral one and sent him to a cat rescue place. He was no problem as he hunted when hungry not for fun like the domestic cats do. Sorry for the rant cat lovers but I miss seeing Mr Black and White sunning himself by the stables.

[steve1]

36 minutes ago, Flying Pig said:

 

If you're still in the Derwent Valley, Steve, they're pretty numerous around there.  Great white has also been seen in the area.

 

 

My local patch, started in Lockdown 1 last year, reached 53 species in a year and a day with a flythrough peregrine last week.  Today it went up to 54 with a cracking male redstart (just passing through).  It's a smallish piece of mixed farmland between the town and the motorway, so nothing special as habitat.

 

I can see the River Derwent, the East Riding one, from my bedroom window.

 

steve

[Phil Bullock]

1 hour ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Recent sightings in our garden, a Bullfinch and a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.

 

Since next door moved her four cats here we don't get as many different types of small birds as we use to and the kestrels don't hunt over our paddocks anymore.

There was a feral cat that lived around here, it had a wide territory. Since we moved here three and half years ago other people have moved here with about 10 cats in total. The feral one didn't like all this competition so use to attack the other cats, some needing vet treatment, £££££££. So all the neighbours got together and caught the feral one and sent him to a cat rescue place. He was no problem as he hunted when hungry not for fun like the domestic cats do. Sorry for the rant cat lovers but I miss seeing Mr Black and White sunning himself by the stables.

Lucky to see the lesser spotted Woody Mr M. Are you sure he wasn’t a cut and shut from a greater spotted? 

[Clive Mortimore]

1 minute ago, Phil Bullock said:

Lucky to see the lesser spotted Woody Mr M. Are you sure he wasn’t a cut and shut from a greater spotted? 

It was very small, too small to be a greater. We use to get Greater Spotted Woodpeckers in our garden in Essex and they seemed huge. It wasn't a Father Ted moment either.

 

Something I haven't seen here in Lincolnshire as yet is a green woodpecker, the meadows I use to walk our dogs was full of them eating insects in the grass and bashing their beaks on the wooden electric poles.

[88D]

22 hours ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Recent sightings in our garden, a Bullfinch and a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.

 

Since next door moved her four cats here we don't get as many different types of small birds as we use to and the kestrels don't hunt over our paddocks anymore.

There was a feral cat that lived around here, it had a wide territory. Since we moved here three and half years ago other people have moved here with about 10 cats in total. The feral one didn't like all this competition so use to attack the other cats, some needing vet treatment, £££££££. So all the neighbours got together and caught the feral one and sent him to a cat rescue place. He was no problem as he hunted when hungry not for fun like the domestic cats do. Sorry for the rant cat lovers but I miss seeing Mr Black and White sunning himself by the stables.

I’m with you on the cat front: they sit below the feeders, so the birds have stopped going. Luckily, I have another part of the garden away from the cats’ range, I sit there now. 

[monkeysarefun]

Each year feral cats in Australia kill 1.4 billion native birds and animals, that is more than are estimated to have died in the catastrophic  bushfires of 2019.

[monkeysarefun]

So my dad being in his '80's took lockdown pretty seriously, so much so that he seems to have become the birdman of Alcatraz. I was there this afternoon just in time for feeding.

These are Crested Pigeons, Rainbow Lorikeets and a Little Corella. Birds that avoided the camera were a Grey Butcherbird, some noisy miners and a magpie.

 

 

 

Rainbow Lorikeets show little fear of humans once they know they are going to get a feed.

 

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by monkeysarefun

[LimboBrit]

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

Rainbow Lorikeets

Beautiful! I want one.

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, LimboBrit said:

Beautiful! I want one.

Dad has got them eating out of his hand. Or my hand in this case..

 

[J. S. Bach]

Finally something nice from Aussie!

[monkeysarefun]

2 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Finally something nice from Aussie!

They are highly venomous but.

[Killybegs]

Quite large numbers of greenfinches arriving in the garden over the last two days. Very encouraging as their numbers have been in decline and this is the most we have seen for a very long time. We are also into double figures with goldfinches. Good times.

[Flying Pig]

On 17/04/2021 at 09:20, Killybegs said:

Quite large numbers of greenfinches arriving in the garden over the last two days. Very encouraging as their numbers have been in decline and this is the most we have seen for a very long time. We are also into double figures with goldfinches. Good times.

 

Likewise here - none for years, one or two about the town last year and at least six singing males this spring.

 

I saw another migrant redstart near home yesterday and apparently Mrs @Lambton58 did too in another part of the country.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Flying Pig

[Flying Pig]

On 20/04/2021 at 10:00, Flying Pig said:

I saw another migrant redstart near home yesterday

 

The same field held a wheatear this morning.  Nearby, I watched a grasshopper warbler reeling not twenty feet from me.  A lesser whitethroat was singing, but declined to show.

[88D]

Mr Heron inspecting my ongoing repairs to the summer house. Looks to be a regular now, despite mobbing by the crows. I’m getting fed up of inspecting the pond after every visit. Do you reckon he’d make a good finial for the roof?

[jonny777]

Well knock me down with a feather. 

 

I have just spent 5 minutes watching an adult blue tit feeding a juvenile at my garden seed feeders. I don't think I have ever seen this in April, as I thought Blue Tits delayed their egg laying until May. 

 

All this and in steady rain with a temperature of 7C. I hope the baby blue tits avoid hypothermia. 

 

 

[Rivercider]

I'm not a regular on this thread, and this is not in our garden, where we have only usual blue/great/coal tits, and  goldfinch/blackbird/robins etc.

Can the collective please tell me what bird this is? We saw several of them flying around the end of Brean Down in the Severn Estuary last week.

 

 

This may be another of the same family?

 

Edit - I am wondering, some kind of wheatear? 

 

 

cheers

 

 

Edited April 28, 2021 by Rivercider
Additional suggestion.

[jonny777]

It looks like a Wheatear. I was also at Brean Down (on Sunday) and I was convinced I heard a couple of Chiffchaffs in the hawthorn bushes. 

 

What amazed me was the number of Swallows flying over during the time I was there. 

[PhilJ W]

Its some sort of plover but which I have no idea.

[jbqfc]

4 hours ago, jonny777 said:

Well knock me down with a feather. 

 

I have just spent 5 minutes watching an adult blue tit feeding a juvenile at my garden seed feeders. I don't think I have ever seen this in April, as I thought Blue Tits delayed their egg laying until May. 

 

All this and in steady rain with a temperature of 7C. I hope the baby blue tits avoid hypothermia. 

 

 

 

are you sure it was a juvenile as the male feeds the female as part of the courtship i have been seeing lot of it this week 

 

John 

[Rivercider]

1 hour ago, jonny777 said:

It looks like a Wheatear. I was also at Brean Down (on Sunday) and I was convinced I heard a couple of Chiffchaffs in the hawthorn bushes. 

 

What amazed me was the number of Swallows flying over during the time I was there. 

Thanks, we were there last Monday.

We also thought we heard chiffchaffs, and also saw a couple of stonechats.

 

cheers