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daily delight, lymm UK, garden and nearby reports (1 Viewer)

he was around for just two or three days, being new to birding and identification i had no idea it was significant.
i was new in this area of UK and the garden was neglected and no-one had been in it much for months. there was a period a week or so after putting out the feeders late in the year when i moved in when suddenly i got visits from goldfinch, greenfinch and bullfinch for just a couple of days then they moved on for some inexplicable reason. i was watching out for chaffinch because as a child they were familar to me. i finally saw one or two in the hawthorns and one day i realised one i had been watching on his own wasn't much like a chaffinch, i identified him carefully as a hawfinch and had no idea they were uncommon.
at about that time he and the other finches moved on and i only rarely see them now apart from greenfinches who spend a lot of time next door in deserted grounds. i am tempted to ask permission to visit that area as no one keeps it up and there are twenty or thirty metres of varied hedging and shrubs where i see lots of bird activity but cannot identify what it is through the xcreening fences and hedge.
i wonder why hawfinches are uncommon, i am sure they were around more when i was a lad 50+ yrs ago? i would like to know more sbout different feed by season, insect hatches, seeds etc and will focus on that as the seasons roll on if i am still about to enjoy it all. some of my friends in different areas of UK have many finches and i think it may be down to planting and surviving weeds.
 
I think its more their food diet and the fact that they are shy......The rest of finches are easy most common being greenfinch and chaffinch however in some parts the greenfinch is becoming rarer. all depends where you live the siskin can be common and if you live near heathland so can the linnet but bullfinch tend to be a bit shyer and the hawfinch is just difficult. I cant remember the bullfinch or hawfinch ever being common in my 45 years of what I can remember (since the age of 5).

Dave
 
Oddly, greenfinches were very common in my area and garden up to a few years ago. They were the 'default finch' at the feeders. Now they are very uncommon, replaced by goldfinches. I'm also seeing more bullfinches than heretofore. I wonder if the decline in greenfinches is down to Tricho....they seemed to be its main victims.
 
DavidC said:
I think its more their food diet and the fact that they are shy......
Click to expand...

Hawfinches aren't particularly shy, it's more that most of the time, they feed high in trees (this time of year is the exception, when they come down for fallen seeds). They're scarce in Britain because our climate (mainly lack of summer heat) doesn't support the diversity or quantity of tree seed crops that places with warmer summers do. Head to e.g. southeast Europe, and they're abundant.
 
Julie50 said:
Hi and welcome to the forum - I have found it most helpful.

I am a fairly new birder, just coming up to my first year "anniversary". Try Niger seeds for the finches, especially the gold finches. They have a fascinating burbling song which always makes me smile.

I live in a first floor flat - so rely on walks and nature reserves for my birding :)
Click to expand...

We recently moved to a temporary small house. The garden is 6m x 4m, I put out sunflower hearts, fat balls and peanuts. A fortnight ago I put out niger seeds hoping to attract the Bullfinch pair visiting us occasionally, to come a bit closer to the windows.

The Bullfinch were ignoring them, as seemed everything else was ( even the Goldfinch which I thought may have a nibble ). I read that the seed feeder may be the problem, the Bullfinch large beak making it difficult to get the seeds out. The snow the last few days has allowed me time to watch a bit more than usual, the Siskins had been the ones on the niger feeder until yesterday when there appeared a pair of Redpolls. They were back first thing this morning too so hopefully now they've found me they will continue to visit.

I will get a dish style feeder to see if the Bullfinch bill theory has any substance. Jape, the Hawfinch is a great garden bird, I like knowing what others have in their garden, whats common here can be rare in other parts.
 
my most frustrating ID is birds that come to tops of mature sycamores behind my fence. they come in ones and twos, up to four or five and the blackcap will mix happily wiith them. he comes down, they dont. i cannot imagine why the forage there, it us not the seeds, maybe sap or ants or some other insect but they spend five ten minutes at a time. they are always backlit so hard even with binos. they are brown without much marking, no spots or stripes on breast. darker back, paler belly and no obvious colour except two white flashes on wing edge. they do seem to have a suggestion of a slight crest, a hint of uplifted feathers at back of crown! my idea because of size, beak and conformation is maybe female chaffinch but after weeks i stil cant be sure!

also, the gulls! having realised and had confirmed my sole garden gull, the blackheaded gulls dont have black heads in winter, i wonder what the ones with black heads that cruise by so often are ...

and a real newbie question, do some birds live in their nests all year or only when sitting on eggs? i have robin, black birds and dunnocks all spend most of day in a few metres of what i think is oleander. i dont want to poke around but i would love to know what is going on!
 
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Jape
Nests are the centre of a pair of birds' life only during the breeding season although they may visit their nest sites at other times of year. A pair of Carrion Crows used to nest in an oak tree near our back garden and they visited the nest for years even though they weren't using it to bring up a family. The old nest is long gone but crows still visit that oak tree more than the other oaks nearby.
In our leafless hawthorn hedge we can see a Blackbird nest from last year and we know where there is another hidden behind the evergreen leaves of our privet hedge on the opposite side of the garden, but we haven't seen Blackbirds visiting.
Nests can harbour ticks and other insects attracted by the warm bodies of chicks and parents and in some cases guano, so it makes sense to abandon the nest after breeding and maybe use a different nest the following year.

Lee
 
thanks Lee. the bushes turn out to be bay laurel. dense cover for them to shelter in i suppose.
 
20180304_101140.jpg

probably the worst photo ever here other than my sparrowhawk kill moment but it sort of shows the blackcap at the bottom and above him the brown blur is the robin that costantly hassles him. today though he has managed to get a few of the sunflower hearts which will help his survival. i will get a decent camera asap lol to prove my various tales.
 
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it is annoying - the neighbour lady puts out white bread and last night's leftover fish and chips and gets tons of action all day including even the goldfinch and chaffinches, drawn by the commotion i suppose. her cat sits on the step and watches yet the birds just ignore it and my lovely peanuts, suet blocks and sunflower hearts! this may develop into a war. but i dud at last identify some birds next door the other way in the deserted yard ... flitting round the leylandii - goldcrests! new for me as a definite. yup, binos are handy.
 
Hi

Please try to ask your neighbour lady to stop putting white bread out. This is especially important going into the Spring when there are chicks in the nest. White bread has no nutrients for the birds and dry bread can choke small chicks as it swells inside them :( They will admittedly love the fat in the fish and chips!
 
the humans round here communicate in a strange accent, "garble blurgle accle wee?" "oxel cant ee iddle wump". it is a variant dialect of tribal language that has survived since the ice age and deformed by centuries of farming pigs in the swamps. they tend to dribble and snort at the same time as talk. my google translation package came up with 'bugger off back down south you git' but it was struggling. the more refined made money from prostitution and drugs last century and have expensive cars such as Jaguars and Porsches and recreational mobile homes they do not use cluttering the road. they communicate by solicitors' letters. i have had 3 court orders and death threats from simply parking my old Yaris near my house.

today she put out an avocado, a piece of toast and three gin bottles. i shall try - but do not hold out much hope.
 
So, what's the John Dory, Cobber? Is she a few stubbies short of a six pack?

Don't tell me the Aussies don't have their own verbal puzzles :)

Lee
 
That was a 'mad half hour'. watched the usual blackbirds, dunnock, btit, great tit, lttits, robin, woodpigeon, wren all morning, slow and almost boring. 'birds by character' book arrived.

then action and colour! goldfinch, goldcrests, spotted woodpecker, collared pair, jackdaw, tree sparrow, thrush (couldnt tell which but dark back and heavy spots maybe mistle) followed up by a raptor i only saw underside of as it floated by overhead. pale breast and belly and tail, darker buff or even pinkish wing. no bars or stripes. quite deep and broad wings not pointed, like a small buzzard. i wil get books out later.

the goldcrests seem to think they are hummingbirds, almost hovering.

no blackcap,

best day yet and the binos made it all clear and sure.
 
window view-1208x272.jpg

i took a panoramic view. it is a tiny garden, from concrete dove to laurels on right, but the trees and hedging on otherside of fence bring birds in and i count them. there's a bit more to the right but with a bit of chair shuffling this is my usual day. the binos are an amazing adjunct that extends ID to the trees not just the fence!

competition of the day, spot the woodpigeon lol. you can see where the backlighting most of the day confounds me and how dense the twigs and foliage are to right of pic. (he is in the middle, left of the small loop of branch on bottom branch of RH sycamore)
 
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What a great garden Jape. This is very like the bottom of our back garden with a hedge and fence but mature trees too.

Do you get Hedgehogs at night?

Lee
 
i have seen one Lee, once, late last year probably after slugs before the cold set bad. dont they hibernate or something similar?
 
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