Wednesday 19 November 2014

It's Brambling time

I thought that this year we were going to miss out on one of my favourite birds visiting the garden. Normally we have a few Bramblings coming into feed with the other finches somewhere around the end of October or early November.


I was watching the comings and goings on the feeders this morning, mainly Goldfinches on the sunflower seeds, and Blue Tits and Great Tits on the peanuts, with the occasional visit from a Great Spotted Woodpecker. Several Chaffinches were either hovering in front of the feeders for a second or two with out landing, or occasionally balancing just long enough to get out a seed. Only rarely do they land and feed for some time. I glanced at one of the peanut feeders and there was a handsome Brambling, framed by the circular hole in the middle.


As the feeder was close and the window was shut I had to take a couple of quick pictures through the glass, never a very satisfactory way of photographing. It didn't stay on the feeder for long and I didn't see it again.

The flock of House Sparrows in the garden is still doing well, and they particularly like feeding on fat-balls. Unfortunately they are messy feeders and drop as much as they eat, making the area under the bushes outside the kitchen window, were the Sparrow restaurant is, rather disgusting. I found a solution to this by attaching large plant pots to hand down below the feeders and catch at least 90% of the spillage. This empties out as a nice big pie, every now and again, and it is appreciated by various species when I put it on the tree bird table. Today there were up to five Magpies popping in to take advantage of the Sparrows left overs.

1 comment:

Derek Faulkner said...

A novel use for the old TV stand Tony, I threw mine away, not thinking of that.
What I'd give for birds such as you get in the garden, my large flock of sparrows are OK but do get boring.