Friday 8 January 2010

The school was shut today due to the bad weather, so I had the day off work. The early hours were spent watching the garden feeders, where plenty of frenzied feeding was going on by 9 BLUE TIT, 5 GREAT TIT, 2 COAL TIT, 11 GREENFINCH, 21 CHAFFINCH, 14 GOLDFINCH, 8 HOUSE SPARROW, 3 DUNNOCKS, 7 COLLARED DOVES, 3 ROBINS, 11 BLACKBIRDS and 6 STARLINGS, all the usual species to be found.

I threw out a couple of old apples, some old stale biscuits and a few other bits of food scraps, this brought in JACKDAWS and MAGPIES, and by this time 2 GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKERS had joined the throng.

Around 10am there was too much disturbance from the surrounding houses, Kids, Dogs, and a workgang next door rippping out hundreds of years of history from the big old house, they were chopping down a row of old yew tree's and knocking down part of the old boundary wall - just to make a bigger entrance for the owners cars, typical rich city folk and know nothing types. Rant, Rant, Rant!

Off I went then, out onto my patch in the snow and ice. I walked all through the tree nursery, and saw............a Robin, that was it ! I crossed over to the Greenhouse Complex grounds, where I fared little better, finding just a party of LONG TAILED TITS, with a few Blue and Great Tits with them. After an hour or so I was getting chilled to the bone, so decided that despite the disturbance, I would go back to the garden feeder watching, there were at least some birds there!

I added SONGTHRUSH to the days sightings, but nothing else new for the next 90 mins, until a nice male SISKIN came in to feed, the first in the garden this year, 2 WOODPIGEONS made an entry, scaring everything up as they flapped about, the 18th species of the day.

Once agin I felt the urge to go out onto my patch, so I took the wife for a snowy walk around Migrant Alley - as she wanted to go out to see all the snowy landscape, whilst we were out a couple of short lived snow showers passed through, but even with two pairs of eyes the only birds seen were ROOKS, Jackdaws, CARRION CROWS, and a male SPARROWHAWK, which looked amazing as it flew slow and low over the fields, the reflective snowy surface showed off it's plumage stunningly.

Back home again, and another stint by the window produced a good bird for my garden - the years first (and probaby the years only) REDWING, it joined the group of Blackbirds for a minute or two, but was scared off by shrieking, unruly children in the large garden next door ( seen and not heard comes to mind! ) The only other new garden bird for the day, and for the garden year list, was a MOORHEN, I wonder if it will bring its two friends back, as it did during the last cold spell ?

Overall it was quite a good garden day, 20 species came in to feed, taking the years garden count to 22. The only bird not be seen today that was expected in, was the Nuthatch.

Tomorrow its a full patch walk, but I think i'll be lucky to find above 30 species, thats if I get all the way round!

I got a few garden pics today, through the window glass, so they are a bit blurry.

Above is the male Siskin, with a couple of Greenfinch's. Below is a close up of the siskin, - brilliant little birds.



Above and below is the Great Spotted Woodpecker

and below is the Redwing, a real treat for my garden

last of all is the Songthrush, not a usual visitor, so a most welcome one






11 comments:

Oxonhoath Birds said...

I saw the devastation in your neighbours garden Warren, looks bloody awful. Ime sure you have to have permision to cut down yew trees.

swatson said...

just love the siskin Warren,beautiful bird.I had them last year but none so far this.The redwing is another great sighting.
Sheila

gypsyrose said...

Gosh Warren you are so dedicated to your patch, makes me feel so lazy lol I wouldn't really know where to go to find any different birds than those that I see in the garden maybe I should join a bird watching group,
I love your Photos,

Lancashire and Lakeland Outback Adventure Wildlife Safaris said...

We too have noisy small things next door and when they mopved in the first thing they did in the garden was cut down the only trees in the street - dorks. 20 species in the garden is a bit rich, 2 is our limit most days!

Cheers

D

Greenie said...

Warren ,
Hope you feel better after your rant .
Some great garden birds today , still waiting for a Siskin here .

BlueJam said...

Hi,

Love the blog, keep up the good work! I was trying to find contact details but couldn't so I posted.

We have just finished a new site for use by the birding community:
www.birdingnews.co.uk
We are contacting a limited number of people that we hope will let us know what they think about it before we take it out of beta. If you could let me know what you think that would be great.

We also have an iPhone app out that can be used in conjunction with the site, you can find out more about the iPhone app here:
http://www.birdingnews.co.uk/iphone/

and this links through to the app in iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=348791972&mt=8

Paul

Monika said...

I can't get over how pretty those great spotted woodpeckers are. So much sharper looking that the comparatively grungy red-breasted sapsucker I picked up today.

Stay warm!

Anonymous said...

I`ve been hoping for a garden Siskin, Warren. But they`re a bit thin on the ground up here.

I also have to contend with nuisance next door neighbours, but mine are in their 60`s/70`s. Nevertheless they act like kids most of the time. I wish they`d accept a bungalow off the council and bugger off. Noisy B******* they are....

Warren Baker said...

Paul,
I visited your site, and it looks like a good resource for people to use, Are you going to pass on all sightings to the relevant agencies, eg the BTO.

Mike said...

Nice pics Warren, no Siskins here yet but I am hoping.

ShySongbird said...

Great sightings there Warren. We had a couple of Siskins a couple of years ago for just a few days during bad weather, very unusual here and I think they were just passing through.

Concerning the neighbours, more money than sense comes to mind! How sad about the trees.