Tuesday 26 December 2017

Boxing Day

The first chance this Christmas to get out – on a lovely bright but mild day. A walk along Greenhills Lane was depressingly birdless with a small flock of Long-tailed Tits, Buzzard, Kestrel and Sparrowhawk the only birds of note.
I later went down to the apple trees near the waterworks where my wife had seen some thrushes feeding. Around twenty Fieldfares were here…




Interesting watching the different feeding strategies, the Fieldfares were in first.
Once the apples had been opened up the Starlings would move in…


And then later the smaller passerines including tits, Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Robins and more surprisingly this…


That means this White-eye has survived the cold for at least a fortnight.

A number of Blackbirds were also here but they fed exclusively on fruit on the ground whilst the Jackdaws only went for fruit small enough to be carried away.

Sunday 10 December 2017

10th December

The cold weather pushed lots of birds  into the garden this morning. My wife mentioned glimpsing a strange one and I had a few heart-stopping glimpses of it with thoughts of exotic rarities until this hopped into clear view….


A poor picture in bad light but obviously some species of White-eye, undoubtedly an escapee from someone’s aviary. Oh well…  It came back a couple more times through the day but a Robin acted very aggressively towards it each time and drove it off.
In addition to the usual sparrows, finches and tits other birds in the garden included Nuthatch, Great-spotted Woodpecker, four Jackdaws and at least six Greenfinches. The most I have seen for many months.


Yesterday I spent some time in the churchyard. There are four mature Yews in there and I had thoughts of finding Hawfinch. No luck but lots of bird activity including a handful of Bullfinches…


…A flock of 30 Long-tailed tits with a couple of Goldcrests tagging along, two Nuthatches, a Sparrowhawk, five Cormorants and buzzard over and lots of Starlings and thrushes feeding…