Garden Wildlife UK

Willpar wrote: Tue Jan 19, 2021 11:06 am Is getting rather busy. Have five wagtails squabbling over the mealworms, and two wrens having a go in the hedge.

Niiiice

I saw a blackcap for the first time in this garden today . My blue tits chased it away , never seen that before.

Had a blackcap a few weeks ago briefly. Only in winter. Though that one was the first for several winters.

I think my robin found his love , I saw her eating while he was on the nearby tree yesterday, and this morning, both of them eating together

Is in the air.

Cor....crikey. I went out into the garden just now to hang up some suet in the small hawthorn. Then all of a sudden the pied wagtails scattered in all directions. Then i could see why behind the hedge, just a couple of metres away on the ground was a sparrowhawk. Once it had noticed me it took off. Don`t think it got anything, not a wagtail anyway. But there was a wren flitting about earlier.

Oh no, that sparrowhawk is becoming a regular visitor in your garden Willpar . As awesome as they are, they are not good for garden birds. I had one hanging around my garden before but I tried and discourage it and scare it away all the time, just to sort of make it think "oh this is not a good place to find food after all" . I really hope it didn't get little wren!

Hi butterfly, yes that is twice this week that the hawk has turned up. I don`t think i can discourage it much as it is quite open here. There are several directions of where it can come in from, and they are expert flyers. But it obviously has several advantage points that it can see my garden and the birds.

I have had ambitious ideas in the past about deterring the Sprawk only to find that it's working hours are dawn till dusk and quite simply I have other things to do than police the garden. The one crumb of comfort I can offer is that they only take what they need and it often the slowest and probably oldest they take first. We all feel affronted at this bird that dares to take "our" birds without so much as a "by your leave" but we have to accept it is nature at work and it's the way it's always been.

I am pretty sure I have a Mistle Thrush coming into the garden. One has appeared the last couple of days feeding along the bottom of the hedge.. Certainly bigger than a Song Thrush and I'm sure a Blackbird. Will try and get a decent pic and post.

I saw at least 50-60 tit family members flying around together today . I know they sometimes fly in groups, and I've seen them before, but I've never seen so many of them flying together. When I saw them from afar I thought its a group of starlings as they fly in big groups, only when they came closer I realised they are smaller and are actually blue/coal/great tits