July in the garden (1 Viewer)

The garden is looking good as bees feed on clover and comma butterflies on bramble. The feeders are slow at the moment but still have regular visitors : blue,great and coal tits. The occasional nuthatch and greenfinch. The skies are filled with house martins , and swifts are still present but many seem to have started heading south. Long tailed tits still pas through the garden and mistel thrushes can be heard rattling over head.

Are your Long-tailed Tits seasonal? Around here they seem to stay in the woods and large parks all year except perhaps in the dead of winter, when I may see them in residential shrubbery.

Mine visit all through the year , feeding in the gardens and breeding in the gardens,although they dissappear from time to time. I watched them fledge around 9 young a month or so ago.

I had a Long-tailed Tit in the garden this morning, only about the fifth time they've visited me. I could hear it calling, but when I went outside it appeared to be on its own - most unusual to only see one. Plenty of House Sparrows still, about 25 this morning. Apart from that there's a few Starlings, Blackbirds, Woodpigeons and Collared Doves, and the odd Greenfinch and Blue Tit.

Plenty of bees here too feeding on the lavender, and I had my tenth butterfly species of the summer this morning when a Painted Lady appeared, a garden tick.