What's flying near you?

There are lots of birds using our feeders at the moment; sparrows, chaffinches, several robins, blackbirds, blue and great tits and some large woodpeckers and an occasional long tailed tit.
Fieldfares visit when very cold like this for the apples still on the ground. A couple of thrushes visit regularly for the escargot. I saw one hammering on a stone when i went for a walk this afternoon.
I'm a bit worried for the birds I've not seen lately. I've not seen any wrens since the start of the year or buzzards of which I used to regularly see five or six spread out in one particular field. I think the cold is taking its toll.

Well in response to that...I regularly see wrens, one actually managed to get in my GH last week. And I often see one sat on my garden supports near my feeders. Though no buzzards? They are about though, I think they just don't soar in this cold.

Lots of gold finches, green finch, blue/ black  tits, blackbirds, robins, occasionally a wood pecker. Tons of pigeons

   
Full house with one in the queue

My feeding station has sparrows, starlings, gold finches, blue tits, great tits, wagtails, Robbins, thrush, jackdaws, crows, wood pigeons, and magpies. Occasional visiting duck both Mallard and Muscovy

I very rarely see a wag tail

The feeders are full of Longtailed, Blue and Great tits & Robins. Dunnocks on the ground beneath. There was a wren in the GH today, blackbirds and thrushes in the trees, wood pigeons, the occasional flock of starlings and there's usually a buzzard comes calling most days. He perches in the oak tree and surveys the garden, occasionally leaving a pile of feathers from his victim.
Magpies, Jays, crows and the occasional Spotted woodpecker. Best sighting last year was a Kingfisher, about 10 feet from the kitchen window, eyeing up the pond.

Forgot the wagtails that stalk the roof and goldfinches that come and go, eating the verbena seed heads...........and the bulffinches that are stripping the cherry tree buds. I can't be cross because they are so beautiful.

We mainly get long tailed, blue and great tits, occaisional gold finch, robins and sparrows. We get a few wrens in the low bushes and plenty of blackbirds

Our most usual visitors are a very cheeky robin (and his more cautious family members), and a pair of great tits. The blackbirds have been enjoying the bird bath, and then there's the inevitable fat wood pigeons that raid the ground feeder.

(Apologies for the blurriness of the photo - it was taken with my phone through our kitchen window, and the blackbird seldom stopped moving!)

   

Earlier in the year there were long-tailed tits on the fat feeder and a pair of blue tits, but I haven't seen them around lately - fingers crossed it's just because I'm staying indoors a lot more. Our feeders are mostly in the front garden as it's more open (and gets more foot traffic) and therefore is a poor hunting ground for cats, but the main rooms of the house are on the back so there aren't many birdwatching opportunities in this weather.

There was also a jay visiting earlier in the year, having discovered that he/she could raid the robin feeder by bashing it hard enough to make it swing at a steep angle and spill its contents onto the ground!

I put up a niger feeder in the back garden in the hope of attracting goldfinches, which I often see around the neighbourhood, but none in the garden so far. There are also green woodpeckers living on the rec that our house backs onto, but again they don't usually venture into gardens. A pity, as they're welcome to our ants' nests!

Since the invasion of sparrows we've lost green and goldfinches but still get tits, blue, great and long tails. Robins feed near the bedroom window especially now it's cold. Blackbirds and pigeons are marauders and will eat us out of house and home given the chance. Wrens, blackcaps, chaffinches visit and in the summer a pair of goldcrests or firecrests (ID not easy)popped in for a bath. Buzzards and red kites are still soaring. Green and greater spotted woodpeckers occasionally and a regular sparrowhawk upsetting everyone. Oh and I forgot, last month saw a barn owl up the garden just before dusk.
Our most notable visit , the only time I've seen one, was by a nuthatch on the fat balls.
What else is flying? Helicopters - apaches, chinooks - jets, puddlejumpers, aerobatic planes and microlights. We live near both military and private airfieds .

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!

Beware sparrows, they're thugs and have frightened off many of our pricier birds.