Medium Birds

Eurasian collared doves are occasional visitors to our garden but don't come often as, to keep other 'medium sized' birds off the bird grain, we cover it with wire - which, sadly, excludes the doves. When they do come they're usually in pairs and occasionally single but today, walking up the road a few hundred metres from our house, we came across a tree with....

....no less than thirteen doves in it, joined shortly after this picture was taken by two more. The internet tells me that large groupings of these doves usually only occurs where there is a plentiful supply of food - so the householder in whose garden this tree stands must have found a way of feeding them without attracting every crow in Golspie.

Talking of which, the jackdaws are, after a brief absence, back in large numbers. When we returned from our walk this morning there were no less than eight of them on the roof of our house, from which they mount raids on the bird feeders usually, though not always, unsuccessfully.

The wires on the chimney are to prevent the herring gulls from nesting there but this year....

....it may be unnecessary, for there are very few of this species doing what they should be doing: making a fearful noise on the rooftops while they choose their nesting sites.

The reason for the very evident drop in numbers may be bird flu. It was recently discovered in herring gulls in the Moray Firth and there are relatively few of them gathering in their usual feeding spots such as the mouth of the Golspie Burn and the school playing fields. On the other hand, they may be off somewhere sunny on their winter holidays and will reappear, reinvigorated and doubly noisy and quarrelsome, in the next few weeks.