Winter Thrushes

We get a decent selection of wintering thrushes in the village. Several (up to ten) Redwings are roosting in next door’s holly tree and are usually around eating berries or sitting high in the birch trees. So far, as there are plenty of berries, they stay up in the trees, but later on they will likely be down in the leaf little looking for insects. A few blackbirds are around too, also in the holly tree, or on the lawn. While there seem more redwings than last year, blackbirds didn’t yet get close to the max count of 11 last year. Fieldfares are plentiful in the orchards and wet fields around the region; we see them overhead but not often in the garden. Not unless there’s a snowfall. A Mistle thrush was around the garden earlier in the autumn, but there’s not much mistletoe so it moved on, but probably not far. The orchards round here are full of mistletoe, which these birds guard jealously against competitors. Rounding it off, I saw my first garden song thrush since the blog started in June the other day - as usual it keeps a low profile around the corners of the garden.

#360 Redwing

#403 Song Thrush

#359 Mistle Thrush

#7 Blackbird

Kitchen Scraps

Normally the corvids don’t comer into the garden much. Jackdaws are always around the rooftops, but they only come down peck fat balls when the weather gets cold. This week I had a lot of fatty scraps from the kitchen to put out, and it attracted the attention of several birds. The rooks saw it first and six of them gathered in the trees around getting up the nerve to drop down to take something. They dominated the local jackdaws chasing them off when they came anywhere near, but while they came into the lower branches, they still wouldn’t come down to the food until a pair of magpies dropped in. The magpies grabbed tidbits and flew off several times, and eventually a couple of rooks gathered up the courage to try the food. They didn’t seem to like it much though, and in the end let the magpies have most of it.

A morning of birds

A beautiful sunny, still and cool morning, starting to feel even a bit autumnal.  There were lots of birds around, especially in the neighbours' large birch trees at the foot of the garden.  Family groups of blue tits, great tits, goldfinches, greenfinches, blackbirds and house sparrows were more apparent than usual.  A singing willow warbler and a lesser whitethoat (new for the garden and species #313 for the microEden list) were not locals. They are migrant warblers slowly moving south & west, feeding up for the long migration to Africa as they go.  Families of swallows, house martins and swifts were overhead - the swifts will be gone any day now, heading South.  By 10.00 am the birds are almost silent - you'd never know they were there.

It seems a good time to mention the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and their Garden Birdwatch survey that collects data - weekly maximum counts - of the bird species in your garden.  You can also optionally record other wildlife like mammals, butterflies, etc.  This is great as everyone's records build up a very representative dataset of changes in bird populations in gardens across the UK.  The website it interesting.  Consider signing up - It's not too much of a commitment (https://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/gbw)

The MicroEden backyard on an August morning