Close followers of this blog will have been sorely missing its Small Bird News feature, for which I can only apologise and plead lack of anything really exciting happening in the small bird world in our back garden, inundated as it is by what must now be at least the third brood of the resident house sparrows this year. This cheerful, chattering hoard appears as soon as breakfast is served on the various feeding platforms and consume almost everything, leaving very little to....
....the other residents like the robin. We've been quite worried about the robins as we'd seen little of them, unlike in previous years where there were, at times, as many as three pairs arguing over their territories. One finally put in an appearance along with its young, which was joined under the crow-proof netting by....
....what I'm fairly sure was a young dunnock. Dunnocks are one of my favourite birds mostly because they are so unassuming, minding their own business and never causing anyone any bother. I've often thought of them as the bird equivalent of a small, very energetic mouse.
Hardly anything exotic has come in to the garden, this pair of goldfinches being one of the few exceptions, not even stopping for a bite to eat and moving on pretty quickly.
We do still have both great and blue tits in the garden, possibly because some of the bird feeders have been designed to be tit-accessible and sparrow-proof, but the coal tits have, rather worryingly, disappeared. We've also seen....
....a greenfinch in the last couple of days, a sight which would not have been too remarkable a couple of months ago. His strategy was to appear long after the sparrow's bedtime, when he had all the feeders to himself.
The crows have been as much of a pain as always. We've had some invasions of rooks, which terrify everyone, but the main problem has been the very intelligent jackdaws. One pair dumped this young one in our garden and it's since taken up almost permanent residence, despite some very firm 'discouragement' from us. The small birds hate him as he's a devious bully - you'll probably remember the sort of thing from your school playground.
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