Tuesday 24 January 2012

What a load of rubbish the weather was today, rain for most of it, and a lowering mist to boot for the afternoon - yuk!

Nothing for it, but an afternoon with tea and biscuits and a few hours watching the garden bird feeders :-)

I'm glad to report that I had not one sighting of the Sparrowhawk, the weather was even too lousy for hunting ! As a consequence the garden was full of birds, although they were easily spooked. Most of the activity was down to the 20+ BLUE TITS, which whiz about from feeder to feeder, with them are the less numerous GREAT TITS, only about 5-7 of these are about, hard to count really as they come and go so quick, even more frequent in their foraging trips are the COAL TITS, just 2 of these were seen.

The finch's stayed around the sunflower feeders, peak counts of  10 GREENFINCH, 8 GOLDFINCH, and ten CHAFFINCH were noted, but a lone male BULLFINCH that visited was star bird of the day for me. A few STARLINGS, peaking at 5 birds came down for the fat blocks, and what was spilt onto the floor was taken by BLACKBIRDS, DUNNOCK, and ROBIN. The COLLARD DOVES always come in later in the afternoon, I watched a flock of 15 grab what seed they could, before quickly leaving again, a strategy evolved to outwit the Sparrowhawk attacks  :-)

Other visitors like the WREN, WOODPIGEON, JACKDAW, GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER and of course the pair of NUTHATCH, made for an interesting and varied few hours, but there was still a species missing - the humble House Sparrow, of which there was not a sniff  :-(  Never has a month gone past when a House Sparrow has not been recorded from my garden not in 12 years, is this about to change ?

17 species came to the garden today, the January garden list now stands at 21, which is3 behind the best years of 2009 and 2010.

Despite the gloom I did point the camera, but the results were not that good. I'll post the rest of the photo's taken in last sundays sunshine first, followed by todays. The Bullfinch shots were taken at a distance of 9m, the Woodpecker at 5m.The camera was set at ISO 2000, aperture at 6.3 giving a shutter speed of only a160th.

Long Tailed Tit. They didn't visit today.
Long Tailed Tit
Great Tit


Todays efforts..........

Great Spotted Woodpecker, Male
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Bullfinch, Male
Bullfinch
Bullfinch


10 comments:

ShySongbird said...

It sounded like a very enjoyable garden watch Warren and I think you got some lovely photos despite the gloomy conditions, I would have been well pleased with them! I've only ever seen a Bullfinch once, fleetingly in my garden but as a child they were always present in our garden and annoying my parents by pecking at the buds on the fruit trees!

Love the second photo of the LTT, it really shows how it gets the name of ball on a stick :-)

Glad to find you are showing up when you should on the sidebars now!

Rohrerbot said...

I love your birds:) It would be nice to have such a selection of them at my own. Well I do, but they are mostly all brown and not colorful like the Tit family. Their faces are "cute" when they puff up. I don't think we have this bird species here in the states so they're fascinating to me. Your weather sounds like that of the weather my family goes through in right now in Wisconsin. Yuck!

Alan Pavey said...

Great set of pics Warren, it was grim out there today!!

Warren Baker said...

Hi Songbird,
I read that the Bullfinch is the ''new'' Goldfinch. IE that they are learning to use feeders more and more :-) Good news for anyone wanting to see one at the garden feeders, a bit worrying on the other hand that they need to change their habits! :-)

Glad the bloggers behaving now!

Warren Baker said...

Rohrebot,
You do get the little 'hummers' though :-)

Bob Bushell said...

Nice one Warren.

Anonymous said...

I`ve all on getting 7 species in the garden, Warren. Never mind 17.

Chris said...

Your APN did behave well also at 2000ISO and your pictures are good Warren... We got another snow storm last night... I've the feeling this winter is not gonna stop!

Marc Heath said...

I need to see some nice pics to cheer me up. I don't mind a bit of rain but at least give me some dry stuff and blue sky after work for an hour. Some nice shots Warren.

Millhouse Photography said...

Fantastic selection Warren.