I embarrass myself when I count the number of feeding stations of various sorts we have round the garden but I justify the extravagance in keeping them topped up by saying that buying the food from the local hardware store helps keep it in business and, of course, that the small birds which come to feed give us endless entertainment.
We do vary the feeders. This is a new one located within inches of the glass of the kitchen's french windows which meant that, as we ate, we were joined at the table by a great tit - the first to pluck up courage - followed by....
....a blue tit and then the bird for which it was designed....
....a robin. There are now four robins in the garden and we think that this one is the graveyard robin, who no longer lives in the graveyard but has taken over the garden since the sad death of the garden robin.
The cold weather had a very adverse effect on the coal tit population. From seeing four or more in the garden at any one time we're now lucky to see one. We don't know whether the cold weather killed them or simply scattered them back into the forestry: we hope the latter.
The tits are usually the first into any new feeder but when this patented feeder was put out it was a house sparrow that first worked out that it was filled with good things. The feeder is designed to keep larger birds out and the rain and snow off the food.
Here's an unexpected visitor to the garden, a fieldfare. They're winter visitors from Scandinavia and are usually found in sometimes very large flocks eating all the berries. Fieldfares, along with redwings, are members of the thrush family, and we've had....
....a very smart song thrush visiting us recently, working over the flower beds which Mrs MW has been weeding ready for the summer's flower planting.
As with the coal tits, we saw an alarming drop in the number of greenfinches visiting the feeders but, I'm pleased to say, their numbers have increased in recent days, and we now hear their rather tuneless calling in the trees in the nearby forestry.
Not all birds are welcome in the garden. The gulls are probably the least welcome, particularly the pair which is threatening to build a nest on our chimney pot, but the crows are also unwelcome, though one can only admire the ingenuity and, at times, sheer cheek of the jackdaws as they raid the feeders.
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