What's flying near you?

Our feeders have blue, great and marsh tits most of the time, plus a couple of robins and an ever growing flock of house sparrows. We saw no sparrows in the garden when we arrived a decade ago, although they nest in the holes in the walls in my neighbour's house, but now there are at least fifteen that flock around.


On the ground we see chaffinches, although not as many as before, blackbirds, thrushes, dunnocks, goldfinches, green woodpeckers, wrens, chiff chaffs, garden warblers. In the hedges we get bullfinches, hawfinches in the winter and long tailed tits, and at the forest edge treecreepers, lesser and greater spotted woodpeckers, plus the huge black woodpeckers.


With the exception of sparrows, I would say everything else is in decline. I haven't seen a greenfinch or nut hatch all winter and previously the latter would bully the other birds off the feedeers.


A sparrowhawk regularly comes through the garden as does a peregrine, and buzzards and red kites are regulars. From time to time we see vultures overhead, but not on the ground!!


   

And in non-Covid times we would see this almost every Sunday morning when the weather is good!