Every year, I try to do the RSPB’s Great Garden Birdwatch and most years it provides a few surprises.
I was delighted when the Greater Spotted Woodpecker became a regular visitor to the garden to feed on peanuts and pleased to have him included in the survey some years back.
This year, two Jays have been regular (almost daily visitors) to the nut feeder, along with a couple of enterprising Jackdaws. They use similar tactics: they land in the tree, lunge at the feeder and hang on like grim death, bashing it with their beaks. Sometimes they extract a nut; other times, nuts fall onto the ground and they hop down to scoop those up. Often, they work as a pair, with one on the feeder and one on the ground.
I was hoping the Jays and Jackdaws would feature in my 2016 survey, but neither showed up. They are early birds and may have been and gone before I started the survey for an hour between 9am and 10am.
Something unexpected usually turns up. One year, we had a Tree Creeper (not seen him since) and another year, there was a flock of about 15 Long-Tailed Tits that arrived.
This year, things got off to a very slow start (I thought nothing was going to turn up). Then there was a Robin (which spent the whole hour foraging around the garden), a Wren and a couple of Blackbirds. The Blue Tits turned up in force after about 15 minutes, having realised the seed feeder had been replenished.
I spotted five House Sparrows sitting on the hedge near the acer. They were foraging in the hedge and sitting on the top sunbathing in between forays into the depths of the twigs. House Sparrows have been in decline in the UK, but they are still fairly common near us and always feature in my survey. Max bought me a sparrow box for Christmas, which I need to fit soon, and hopefully that will encourage a few more to take up residence.
Best part of the hour’s observation was spotting seven Greenfinches. I was pleased to see these because numbers have fallen this year. It is thought they have suffered from a disease and I haven’t seen as many around as before. This morning a flock of them arrived about 9.30am and kicked the assorted tits off the seed feeder. They dominated the feeder for 10 minutes. There were always four on the feeder and others flying from the corkscrew hazel to try to get their turn. It was quite a lively time and although I positively counted seven of them, I’m sure there were more. I never really think of them as aggressive birds, but nothing else was allowed on the feeder while they were there and they were scrapping with each other very vigorously. Normally, birds seem to get along quite politely on the feeder, a bird will fly onto a perch, grab a seed and be away, making space for the next one on line. These Greenfinches were a rough crowd, they took all four perches on the feeder and were keen to sit there for seconds or thirds. Other Greenfinches would try to usurp them and when a bird flies at a perched bird, the sitting one will normally move out of the way. These were not moving and the feeder was a buzz with flapping, scrapping finches. Those waiting to grab a place or forced off were hopping around the hazel very excitedly. You could imagine them saying: “How rude, I was on that perch and he just came and shoved me off. I could have lost a feather, he was so rough. Well, I’m not having that, I’m going back and give him some of his own medicine...”
There is normally a surprise during the session and all the Greenfinch scrapping maybe caught the eye of this fellow because my observation came to a dramatic ending at 9.50am when a Sparrowhawk appeared across my sister's garden and landed in the hazel.
Everything disappeared in a flash. The hawk sat there for a few seconds wondering where everything had gone and then flew away, just before I could get the binoculars on him for a good look.
He certainly spoiled the party and the garden was bare for five minutes before the blackbirds and robin re-appeared and resumed their groundwork.
Birds (and numbers) seen this year were:
Greenfinch 7
Great tit 6
Blue tit 5
Chaffinch 5
Sparrow 5
Blackbird 3
Dunnock 3
Robin 1
Wren 1
Wood pigeon 1
Goldfinch 1
Sparrowhawk 1
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