birds feeding like no tomorrow.

[pauco]

well the gang are back in town!!
7am this morning 55+ house sparrows.
11 blackbirds.
20 starlings.
1 robin-chasing anything that landed!!
good mixture of male female chaffinches.
14 greenfinches.
2 blue tits.
2 coal tits.
1 great tit.
the past few weeks have been very quite, but it looks like it could be about to
change I hope so.
bert.

[seb_seb]

55 house sparrows Bert!! youve got quite a colony there

[Elizabeth Bigg]

Bert that's not a gang, it's an army! Are you sure you are not seeing double/treble/quadruple - or more? ELEVEN blackbirds???? Soon have enough to bake in a pie!!

(For our overseas members, who may not follow this, there is a nursery rhyme here that includes the line "Four and Twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie). I think it has political origins, but I'd have to check that in one of my reference books, to be sure.

[Tammie]

It's like that here too Bert... with different species, of course! It was pretty quiet here for weeks, the last half of September and most of October. Now, things have picked up dramatically! It's wonderful! It's snowing right now, almost 2" on the ground already so tomorrow should be awfully busy too! :)

[Mike D]

Unfortunately I have three pussy cats (none of them mine!) which is tending to keep bird numbers down at the moment.

Nice to hear you have a healthy population of our little brown guys - 55+ . . . WOW! Don't know what you are feeding them, but it must be right!
Mike

[helenol]

Can someone explain to me why it is that certain gardens (i.e. mine!) have become very quiet this past few days, whereas other gardens (berts) are teeming with birdlife?

[jayhunter]

I think it is to do with the weather, and our turn will come round soon. If it stops raining up here.

[helenol]

bob, we have had very cold weather this last few days. Yesterday the temperature increased somewhat due to cloud cover and rain overnight. Have you had very cold weather recently "oop north"?

[jayhunter]

Yes last week really deep frosts lasting til gone lunchtime (grass still white on the lawns). Then as you say the clouds rolled in and the temperatures at night went up to about 5 - 7 degrees, daytime around 11 degrees now we have rain, yesterday was showers. Poor old Lapwings are stood out on the peritrack in between flights (aircraft flight that is).

[dave gore]

we have had a busy few days here in aintree (liverpool)too, lots of sparrows on the bird table with blue tits, goldfinches which we only ever seem to see one at a time and robins, plus a thrush for the first time today for a while, really busy even from when i came in from work at 6am right through the day, very enjoyable to watch

dave