Small Birds

For years I have fed and nurtured small wild birds, at times spending quite ridiculous amounts of time developing novel feeders and huge amounts of money of their food, so the fine early spring weather of recent days was a pleasure in that it brought out those that have survived - so far - the rigours of winter.

Dunnocks are one species which does well in this part of Suffolk - they visit our garden every day and have a feeding point which is almost exclusively for their use.

Nor is there a shortage of robins, which vie with the dunnocks for the best spots from which to tell the world that they have a territory which they are prepared to defend.

While robins and dunnocks are to be found wherever there is reasonable cover, the local house sparrow populations are found in ghettos, often in a dense thicket near a house which offers them a generous food supply. Sadly they haven't found our garden yet: we haven't seen a single house sparrow in it in the year we've been here.

Blue and great tit populations flourish locally and we do have the occasional member of these species visit our garden, but they don't seem to have worked out how the standard peanut feeders function so I have invented....

....a special Suffolk peanut feeder, using a Lidl vitamin container, which even the slowest-witted Suffolk tit should be able to work.

The decline in chaffinch numbers is evident though surprising as they have always seemed to me to be intelligent and pushy. We have yet to have one visit the garden but do see them in the hedgerows. We see some other finches, such as goldfinches, but others are noticeably missing, particularly greenfinches.

In an effort to attract small birds into our garden we have begun planting shrubs and trees to offer them cover in this very open landscape. This very poor picture shows a special tree, a rowan planted in the Scottish tradition near our back gate to keep the witches away and, in it, the first bird we've seen perched in it - a dunnock.