Anyone else get slightly "rare" bird visitors?
Jimmy Crawford
Posts: 468
Since I moved the feeder pole to a spot in the garden where I can see it from the sofa, I've started to see birds that I haven't seen since childhood. There's two pairs of Goldfinches, a pair of Greenfinches and this morning, for some reason a Great Spotted Woodpecker feeding on the peanuts.
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It's lovely isn't it - especially early in the morning. We get lots of goldfinches and some greenfinches as well as dunnocks, blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, house sparrows, starlings and a pair of robins who come and sit on our hands to take live mealworms. The goldfinches sing from our big ash trees - it's great.
We have had great spotted woodpeckers and green woodpeckers too, but not so often.
The Dunnocks are hilarious, they have to be the most inquisitive looking little birds around. I've yet to see one that looks like it's head is screwed on straight.Tits and FInches with the exception of the greenfinches are numerous. We only seem to have one Robin this year, He's leaving it a bit late. Starlings only ever turn up after a torrential downpour. Presumably they are having at the worms and leatherjackets flushed to the surface.
I just went out to feed the robins (again) and watched a family of marauding magpies taking eggs from the collared doves' nest - again. The doves put up a fight, but were overwhelmed - again.
I regularly see a little egret, about once a week, by the side of the river.
And what a coincidence - I just heard that 'chick ... chick' call and looked out of the window to see a Gt Spotted Woodpecker feeding in the big ash tree
We saw a tree creeper!
A A Milne
LilyP - we regularly had a tree creeper in the garden round the corner from where I am now - there were two mature trees there. I loved seeing him - mainly late winter - running up and down the trunk
Greenfinches seem to be declining here - not seen any for years, even at my last house where we had hordes of wildlife, I only ever saw the odd one now and again.
Not in the garden but I saw a couple of wheatears on the mountain on Friday. Delightful
I used to see a treecreeper in grounds of the office where I worked
We hadn't seen greenfinches here for a couple of years, but there's at least a couple of pairs around this spring
Wheatears - lovely - saw them on Skye
I've just heard from a friend in Northern Germany who saw a Bluethroat (luscinia svecica) yesterday morning - he said the song was beautiful - apparently they sometimes appear in the spring in the East of England, so I shall keep my eyes (ad ears) open.
Our Gr. Spotted Woodpeckers just love the peanut feeder, and they make real pigs of themselves on the homemade fat feeders - right by the computer window!
I saw a lesser Spotted Woodpecker for the first lime yesterday, (no red underpants), and a pair of Pied Wagtails have taken up residence somewhere close, they are not at all worried about me working in the garden, just keep flitting around me, even talking to me from the apex of the greenhouse while I was inside, which was a real shock!
I had a new visitor in the garden last week, a tiny Robin Redbreast which I know is not unusual, but it has a metal ID ring on its leg. Have never seen a wild bird with a ring in it, could it be part of a breeding program?