Feathered Friends

Earlier this week I was upstairs and heard loads of tweeting and chirping. I looked out the window and my neighbours feeder was inundated with feathered friends. My feeder was empty. I was immediately attacked by a bit of feeder envy and decided to remedy that straight away. 

I had been wondering why my feeder was frequented less often these days and had even googled reasons. One of the reasons was to look at what I was offering. If there are other feeders in the area (up to a mile) that offer tastier morsels than you do then the birds would rather visit that feeder than less interesting feeders. My feeder was obviously deemed as ‘less interesting’! 

Now I LOVE watching the birds in my garden, they bring me great pleasure, so as I said above, I decided to remedy the problem. I ordered a really nice seed feeder that will keep the seed from getting damp and manky (which is what is happening at the moment). I also ordered some tasty insect nibbles, sunflower hearts – loved by songbirds including my favourite little robins, and Niger seed – there are allot of gold finches in the area and apparently they love Niger seed.

I have spotted a few less common feathered visitors in the garden (if not on the feeder) this week. We’ve had a Greater Spotted Woodpecker a couple of times this week – no pictures unfortunately as he is rather camera shy.

A Jay boldly poked around in the lawn long enough from me to capture him with the camera.

Another little visitor spotted, who was decidedly more camera shy, was this sweet little Song Thrush, it could also be a Mistle Thrush, they are nearly identical.

For ages it sat in the crook of a branch watching us. I dashed indoors to get my camera, when I returned the bird was still where I had left it in full view. As I raised my camera it flew off – typical! Let that be a lesson to me in keeping my camera close at hand! I managed to get these rather indistinct pictures by following it as it flew from tree to tree and hopped from branch to branch.