More Bird Feeder Visitors

The soundtrack was recorded at a different time using a small wav / mp3 recorder
50p coin for scale.



Most of the bird sounds, including the clicking, were made by Starlings.

Bird Feeder Visitors

House Sparrow, Greenfinch and Goldfinch incoming



Greenfinch and Goldfinches



Great Tit



A bit of video



The first time I have had Greenfinch and Goldfinches visit for quite a while.
While I am pleased to see the Greenfinch they make me a bit apprehensive as they have often brought finch disease (Trichomonosis) which is fatal to all the visiting finches.

A Greenfinch Comes Visiting

A few years ago I had lots of Greenfinches visiting the bird feeders, that was until the dreaded finch disease reared its ugly head. Then for three years it was the Greenfinches which seemed to bring the disease to my garden. Consequently numbers of Greenfinches and Goldfinches rapidly declined.

Nowadays I watch with some trepidation when one arrives at the feeders.
Fortunately this one seemed to be in good health:







A bit of video:

Green is the Colour

Nice to see a healthy Greenfinch visit today:

Friday at the Flicks - Greenfinch

While I was faffing about with Arduino coding for my weather station I nearly forgot about a video. Anyway I just made it with this video capture of a Greenfinch which visited the bird table earlier in the week:




Much as I like to see them, especially since their numbers plummeted, I am always a bit worried in case they once again bring the finch disease. This one appeared to be good and healthy.

Friday at the Flicks - Bird Table, Hungry Sparrows

Some of the regular visitors to the bird table:



It may have been wet and breezy but the youngsters still needed feeding:



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Greenfinch

Greenfinch

There was a time when I had quite a few Greenfinches as regular visitors but several years of finch disease has reduced their numbers drastically.

It's Been a RAW Day

In more ways than one. Woke up and got out of bed about 5 a.m. to wall to wall sunshine which was promising for a good day. By the time we went walkabout soon after 7 a.m. thick cloud was rolling in from the North Sea and temperatures struggled to reach 12C. It ended up as a morning to try shooting in RAW for the first time, but looking through the kitchen window. Shooting through two layers of glass does nothing to help gain sharp photos but at least RAW files seemed to have better colour definition: (all cropped and processed in Photoshop Elements 10)

Female  Chaffinch
 


Uh oh, I think I'd better move:
 

 Greenfinches:
 

Male Blackbird with a full beak:
 

Blackbird - juvenile


Another experiment - video shot in 640x480 with the 50D and then digitally zoomed in AVS Video Editor software:



Hope you are having better wildlife watching weather than we have here.

Green and Brown and Things

Why is it always dull when I see something interesting, to me anyway, I want to photograph? A couple of grainy photos of infrequent visitors to my garden feeders, a Greenfinch and a female Blackcap on the same feeder:





The Blackcap is a fleeting visitor who will probably move on soon. Greenfinch numbers have suffered greatly in this area with many succumbing to finch disease over the past three years.


The laptop duly arrived on time. It is hard to believe it is second hand, not a mark on it. Soon had it logged in to my wireless network and tried out in the summerhouse. Much to my relief it worked perfectly:



Some things I like the iPad for but for browsing / surfing I find a 10 inch screen is too small. Now I am grappling and coming to terms with Windozy 7 as my main PC is still using XP. One of the reasons, besides cost, for buying s/h was that most new ones I was interested in now seem to have Windozy 8 loaded and I have no interest in that. I might have been tempted to go for a Mac of some sort but even used ones seem to cost the earth.


A few signs of Spring - finally there is frog spawn in the pond:



My primulas are flowering, when the ungrateful birds stop pulling them up and today I had the first wasp indoors. I killed a couple today. They were both very dopey and lethargic so I guess they had recently become active. The more early ones I can dispatch the fewer nests there will be later in the year.

Wings for Wednesday

It was a pleasure to see an adult Greenfinch at the seed feeder:



Not only that but here are two of the four juveniles which had tagged along:



I do tend to get a bit apprehensive when Greenfinches visit these days as the past three Summers they have brought finch disease to my garden. Let's hope we stay clear this year.

Another juvenile was spotted this week and I hope that this time it really was a juvenile Robin:





Finally - a bit blurry - a return visit by the Great Spotted Woodpecker:

Friday at the Flicks - Greenfinch

I didn't have anything new last Wednesday for the Wings and today is no better as the weather has been awful most of the week with lighting levels less than an average mid winter. Here is a short video of a Greenfinch which visited the feeders last March - good job I have a few clips which I haven't uploaded yet.





Easy to tell yesterday was a 13th. Decided to update my iPad1 to the latest iOS5 and wished I hadn't bothered. All told it took 12 hours to get the iPad back to a reasonable, though not fully, working order. Looking round some of the blogs I see I was far from being alone in having problems. The installation of the new operating system seemed to go smoothly but when it came to restoring all the apps there were many problems, crashes, loud ungentlemanly mutterings and lots of cold cups of tea.

One 'bright light in a wicked world'  A favourite free app of mine is 'eBook Search' which is great for finding and downloading free ebooks on the iPad. This stopped downloading with iOS5 so I emailed Patrick Thompson, the founder of Inkstone Software, who maintains the app and within a few hours he had an updated version available for download. I tested that. Brilliant, it is now back to a fully working piece of software.

Friday at the Flicks - Windy, Caterpillar, Hedgehogs, Greenfinches

It is nearly a week since the remains of Hurricane Katia passed over the country. Fortunately, here anyway, wind strength was well down on those forecast as possibilities. Mainly gusts in the 35 to 45mph range. We had stronger winds last January. For wildlfe it matters not what the weather is like, life must go on and they have to eat.



In spite of the wind it was a glorious sunny day. As I checked out the garden pond a movement in the grass caught my eye. At first I though the grey shape crawling through the grass was one of the newts but on closer inspection it turned out to be an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar. They are large, stretching to about 3.5 inches ( 90mm) long. Every so often it would stop and investigate the vegetation and the ground. I read somewhere that they bury themselves underground to pupate and remain there through the winter. Holding the TZ7 steady was difficult in the blustery conditions.



I said earlier in the week I had managed to take some video of the adult and juvenile Hedgehogs so here they are. Focussing a bit iffy in places as the camera was on manual focus and I couldn't find the switch while I was filming from the darkened kitchen. Notice how perfect their table manners were while they were being filmed - not once standing in the dish. Most unusual.



Finally a short clip of the Greenfinches which are a very welcome sight as it shows their numbers are recovering a bit after two years of finch disease. This goup of seven or eight are mostly juveniles.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you wherever you are.

Wings for Wednesday - Greenfinches Return

Until two years ago I always had Greenfinches visit the Birdy Bistro. That was until the first outbreak of finch disease (Trichomonosis) two years ago which reduced the numbers of Goldfinches and Greenfinches drastically. That was followed by another outbreak of the disease last year. Since then I have rarely seen a Greenfinch, until this past week or so,

The Goldfinch population has recovered, exploded really, here. I can get up to fifty arguing over the twelve perches on the Niger seed feeders. Now about six Greenfinches have joined them which gives hope that their numbers have started to recover as well.









I can ony hope it is too late in the year for a new outbreak of finch disease in this area.

Friday at the Flicks - Sparrowhawk, Sunlit Starlings, Dunnock, Finches

I was just setting up a different lens combination when I spotted a Sparrowhawk sat just past the end of my garden having a good look round.



Starlings can look so dull and uninteresting until the sunlight catches them to show how their feathers can be multi coloured.



One or two Dunnocks are regular visitors to the Birdy Bistro. Sometimes they visit the bird table but more often they are searching in the shadows. This was the first time I used a new tripod with a fluid head so it was in the way of being a test shoot.



Finally there is always fun and games when Greenfinches and Chaffinches want to use the same feeder.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Goldfinches, Greenfinches

There have been plenty of Chaffinches here all Winter but other finches have been much more scarce this year. Usually there has been the occasional single Goldfinch visiting and even less often there has been a couple so it was very pleasing to see a little group of five arrive one day.



Even scarcer this year has been the sighting of Greenfinches and it was quite a surprise to spot this pair quietly digging in to some free food.



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Friday at the Flicks (Sparrows, Greenfinch, Goldfinch)

Yesterday morning I was wondering whether there would be a Friday at the Flicks this morning. About 10a.m. my internet connection failed. Phoned Zen and after nearly an hour trying various tests and configurations still no connection though the phone link appeared to be live. The problem was passed on to BT and fortunately by late afternoon things began to work again.

Nothing spectacular today. My usual crowd of House Sparrows which often arrive like a cloud rather than a flock.




It has been great to see the occasional young Greenfinch




The juvenile Goldfinches and their parents are very regular visitors at the moment.



This morning was the first of the 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'  but the Sun soon burned off the thick mist which had enveloped the village first thing.

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

Beetles and Bathers

A couple of days ago I turned over a piece of wood and found this tiny shiny beetle. The camera couldn't catch just how metallic it looked seeming to change from blue to green depending how the light caught it. Body length about 5mm. I am pretty sure it is a Chrysolina, maybe Chrysolina herbacia.



The same day this beetle had fallen in the water in Bobby's bowl. This one was about 11mm long and appears to belong to the group Xantholinus. What caught my attention was its long thin body and the tiny wings.



Yesterday I set up the 350D and home brew IR detector to monitor the pond waterfall. This time it worked very well, triggering hundreds of times during the day with only a tiny number of shots without a bird in sight. In fact it took a long while to sort through all the shots and decide which to keep.

Amongst the visitors were:

Greenfinch


Goldfinch


Wood Pigeon


Starlings


Clumsy young House Sparrows


Whole collections of House Sparrows


There were many times when the waterfall was so full of birds they had to queue to get in


Not shown today Chaffinch and Coal Tits were also photographed. One thing is certain - a supply of drinking and bathing water is just as important (if not more so) as seed feeders, especially with all the dry days we have been having this year.

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.

Friday at the Flicks (Greenfinch Family, Bathing Starlings, Newt Eating)

The Greenfinch family have visited a couple of times and on the second occasion I was able to take some video of them. Mother and youngster were at the seed feeder while father stayed nearby keeping watch in case the rowdy gang of Starlings returned.



The Starling families are here several times a day. I don't have to see them to know they are about as the sound of hungry juveniles can be deafening. One thing that can be said about Starlings - they keep themselves clean and can be found bathing in any available water, no matter how small the container.



Once I have given the tadpoles their daily ration of Koi floating sticks I sometimes put a few in the main pond for the fish. One day to my surprise I spotted a Smooth Newt helping itself to a piece which had been missed by the fish.



It took about five minutes to devour the whole stick and it was fascinating to see the way it would slowly approach its quarry and then make a lunge.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.