Not What I Expected

I spotted only one visitor to the new feeder yesterday.
I had expected it to be a House Sparrow or Blue Tit not ......



...... a Magpie.
It did its best to get its head through the bars but left empty beaked.
As far as I could tell it was the only visitor.
There were no beak marks in any of the jars of peanut butter.
Early days yet. It had only been up for a few hours.

The bird table has had lots of activity, mainly House Sparrows, Starlings and Blue Tits.
An occasional visitor is a Coal Tit.

 

As is usual at this time of year the Coal Tit will take black Sunflower seeds and hide them in the ground or in a crevice in a tree trunk. I have watched them do both in previous Winters.

(Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday

A Few Regulars

Coal Tit:


Blue Tit:


Great Tit:


Robin:


Wood Pigeon:

Coal Tit

I had removed the mixed seed feeder once there was enough natural food for the birds. Also it prevented the hoards of Starlings being able to scatter the seed all over the place. I put it back up on Tuesday and it wasn't long before it was in use. One of the first to arrive was a Coal Tit, the smallest of the tit family:





As it was visiting very frequently I imagine it was taking sunflower hearts to hide for later in the year. I have often watched them taking sunflower seeds and hiding them in cracks in old tree stumps or in the bark of trees.

Which Seed Shall I Eat Next?

Plenty of small bird activity around the Birdy Bistro yesterday when temperature reached a maximum of 6C with an over night wind chill of -3C. Cold breeze but beautiful clear Sunny sky.

House Sparrow


Coal Tit


Blue Tit


Great Tit


Robin


Chaffinch


All photos taken with the Canon 40D with 100-400mm zoom lens and cropped.

Juvenile Coal Tit

Over the past few weeks there have been many different juvenile birds visiting the garden. From my observations the very bad weather earlier in the breeding season doesn't seem to have had the drastic effect I expected. Today I was fortunate to catch a couple of brief glimpses of a juvenile Coal Tit. It was a pity it didn't stay long enough to get the video camera set up but I did manage a couple of stills. This is the better of the two:

Wings on Wednesday - Coal Tit Food Larder

I was watching a Coal Tit grabbing sunflower hearts from the bird table and taking them low down into some bushes at the bottom of the garden. I had a slow wander down there to see what it was doing with them. Even though I was less than twenty feet away it took no notice of me and carried on. To my amazement it was hiding the seeds in the bark of an old tree stump:



To see better detail you can click on the picture which will take you to Flickr where you can see larger versions.

Coal Tit, Penny

I spent a while yesterday watching a Coal Tit making very frequent visits to the feeders and making off with a black sunflower seed each time. It didn't seem to go far, flying across the garden to a large evergreen tree. I'm not sure whether it has a nest there or was burying the seeds in the soft dead needle covered ground under the tree. I have seen them bury seeds there in the past.







The Great Tit babies in the nest box are growing rapidly and a couple are regularly stretching their wings. I don't think it will be long before the first couple fledge. The live video which runs for most of our daylight hours can be seen by clicking HERE.

Penny is slowly settling down and soon took possession of the dog bed. As with the nature of Greyhounds she is always on the lookout for food so there have had to be some re-arrangements made in the kitchen! After a couple of whoopsies in the first few hours she now seems to be clean about the house. That was one thing I was concerned about as she has only known kennel life up to now. She is very loyal, around the property anyway, and seems to be attached to me with an invisible length of elastic. Out and about it could be very different as her chasing instinct would kick in and I was warned they were very poor on recall. As Penny has only mixed with greyhounds it will take some time for her to recognise other dogs as dogs and to be trained to ignore cats, squirrels and such like. To that end she is never off her lead when out and wears a muzzle.

 

Once we return we have a game of ball in the back garden which gives her the bursts of exercise she needs.

Bird Table Visitors

Yesterday I set up my IR passive detector next to the bird table to see what was visiting. The camera was on a tripod in the kitchen. I am always hopeful that it will capture something new - not yet though. Just plenty of the regulars.



Lighting conditions for photography were awful for most of the time and the results grainy so I combined some of the half decent in one collage. The 350D with 70-200mm lens took over 300 shots but most ended up in Dusty Bin..



I was surprised how often the Robin appeared in the shots as I rarely see it on the table.

Blue Tit, Coal Tit, Goldfinches

With the Sun shining on part of the garden it was a treat to watch the various visitors from the kitchen window today.

Blue Tit




Coal Tit




Goldfinches

Friday at the Flicks - Garden Bird Visitors, A Modern Scarecrow

A bit of a dearth of new video at the moment as the birds are eating less from the feeders during this mild spell and the dull grey skies are not conducive to clear photography. Anyway here are some of the birds which came to eat this week.

Starling
Goldfinch
Coal Tit
Great Tit, Tree Sparrow, Male Chaffinch, more Tree Sparrows



 Something I have been meaning to video for quite a while is a bird scarer / modern scarecrow which seems to do a decent job on a local vegetable patch. It doesn't really show well on the clip but the 'head' is made up of different sections some of which are holograms which really glitter as it turns round in the wind.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Nestbox, Bird Visitors, Tree Sparrow

A few days ago there was more interest in the nestbox with a Blue Tit examining the outside early in the morning and another internal visit later in the day from a Great Tit. Since this was filmed I have moved the outside camera a bit nearer to get a better close up.



A few of the regulars to the garden.
Dunnock, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Wren and Blue Tit


On the only visit to the garden so far  this Autumn here is the Tree Sparrow



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks (Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Magpies)

Some birds don't let a bit of rain get in the way of eating. This Chaffinch spent most of its time just waiting for a space at the feeders.



As usual at this time of the year the Coal Tits are gathering as many black sunflower seeds as possible to bury as they build up their winter store. (No sound on this one)



One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
Four for a boy
Five for a secret never to be told
Magpie



I have removed the general seed feeders for a while and moved the Goldfinch feeders to a different part of the garden. A few days ago I saw what looked like a Greenfinch suffering from finch disease so I want to make sure it doesn't spread quickly through the visiting population. There are still peanut and fat ball feeders as the finches rarely, if ever, visit those.

Have a great weekend watching the antics of the wildlife around you.

Bird Table Visitors

Yesterday I set up the IR detector next to the bird table with the camera indoors to see how well the setup would work. As the sensor could 'see' through the table it would also respond to other birds at the feeders but did catch quite a few comings and goings. Nothing out of the ordinary but it was great to see  a Greenfinch family visit as their numbers were drastically reduced by finch disease last year.





How small the Coal Tit is when seen next to a young House Sparrow



Blue Tit



A slide show  of some of the visitors (came out darker than the original file when YouTube processed it)



It didn't take long for the birds to get used to the detector being close to the table.



As the photos were taken through double glazing the originals were rather grey so  they were batch processed using Paintshop Pro - another first for me.

Visitors to the Bird Table

As it kept raining yesterday I set up the 350D on a tripod in the kitchen and trained it on my bird table. Then I connected the intervalometer and left it to take a photo about once every 16 seconds. The bird table has wire mesh on all sides to keep out the larger birds but the front can be lowered to allow cleaning and topping up the seed. So the camera could get a clear view I left the front section down. For the first hour or more there was nothing caught on camera but towards late afternoon several species paid a visit.

One of the most frequent visitors was the Coal Tit racing in to grab black sunflower seeds and flying off with them to build up its winter stash.



Another frequent visitor was a Great Tit which would collect a sunflower heart to take to a nearby branch to eat.



Of course a list of regulars here wouldn't be complete without a Starling



or a visit from some House Sparrows.



Recently there has been at least one juvenile Magpie hanging about making an awful din. This one had to visit the table several times before it found the way in.



Finally managing to get some seed after several attempts to find the entrance.



I don't think I would have ever got the Magpie photos if I had been in the kitchen as they are very easily scared away.  Another day I can leave the camera to concentrate on one of the seed feeders or the peanut feeder. The borders on the photos were once again added using the plugin Border Mania.

Food Glorious Food

When I think about it most wildlife seems to spend a large part of its time just looking for food. Here are some of those which came looking yesterday.

Blue Tit and Starlings
   

House Sparrow
   


Coal Tit


Bumble Bee


Smooth Newt


 Of course, once it had started to get dark, the Hedgehogs arrived. They turned up as I was clearing up in the kitchen and I decided to watch them for a while only to end up being fascinated for the best part of half an hour filming them with the camcorder set to night vision. It would appear that the charging we have seen has more to it than meets the eye at first glance. It seemed to me that what I was watching was part of the mating ritual. I will have to spend some time extracting what I can from the video as the camera was having difficulty focussing and the hogs kept moving where there were obstructions to vision.

Later:
All things being equal there should be some video of the Hedgehogs for Friday at the Flicks tomorrow.