Wednesday 16 September 2015

Bird Sense

I haven’t fed the garden birds much over the summer but with the colder weather I have started putting food out again. Within a short time of filling the peanut feeder this Nuthatch arrived to feed.



I’m always amazed how quickly birds find this food source. The most striking example of this was a couple of Christmases ago. 
I had spent a large part of the holiday trying to add Redpoll to the village year list. I looked in all of the places I had seen them before and plenty of others but all to no avail and I would have put a substantial sum of money on there being none in the village.

One of my Christmas gifts happened to be a Nyger feeder, I hung this out and within twenty minutes there were two Redpoll on it! How on Earth does that happen? 

1 comment:

  1. I've noticed the same thing, but not so extreme as 20 minutes!! I've not been feeding the birds at my hide since May so decided to put out some sunflower seed on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning I went to see if it had been disturbed. One feeder had been emptied and there were marsh tits, nuthatch, jay and all the usuals present. Pleasingly, I hadn't seen the marsh tits since May but they seem to have multiplied to more than 2 birds and I think I had willow too, but without call or song I can't be sure.

    Apropos of nothing, I was chatting to a guy at the woodchat shrike twitch about the ospreys. He confirmed that one bird had the tail feathers missing, so I'm assuming is the same bird that I've seen at Langton. If that bird is the same bird that Andy Johnston has been seeing then it's been around for nearly a month and is covering some patch. Meanwhile, the Springwatch ospreys are already back in Africa!

    Regards, Chris

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