Couldn't go out birding yesterday because of the non stop rain, so after doing some shopping in the morning my birding was confined to watching the birds in the back garden and what a treat it was. It just happened to be the first day the House Sparrow fledglings made an appearance, hard to tell how many exactly because they were on the feeders, on the grass, in the pyracanthas, in the bushes, the garden was just a constant movement of adult and baby House Sparrow, there were probably upward of 15 chicks and 40 adults. The feeders have hardly been touched in recent weeks while they've probably been feeding the young insects but as you can see they made short work of them yesterday, they are filled to the top every single morning, so there must have been plenty of Sparrows with full bellies yesterday.
As if that wasn't good enough I got the first sighting of 3 magnificent looking Starling chicks who made a brief appearance on the garden fence before popping into the tree to have a good munch on one of the suet filled half coconuts. The Dunnock chick was also resident in the garden nearly all of yesterday afternoon, having a good forage around the garden, especially the lawn. This morning it was having a shower under the bird bath whilst 5 House Sparrow were thrashing around in the bath.
A pair of Blackbird have had/got a nest in my neighbours laurel, not the Spliff head, the other side, unfortunately I don't speak to either side, so when I saw them pick what appeared to be a dead/injured bird of Blackbird size, I've been left fearing the worst because not even this apparent tragedy will get me to ask them what happened. It was sadly most likely a cat attack because there are 2 people with cats who let them run wild, one being the Spliff Head, they've killed a few Blackbird and House Sparrow to my knowledge and the Spliff Head's cat attacked a poor Woodpigeon at the base of my feeders last week and the other cat has taken to hiding to under the laurel to jump out and attack the birds, this laurel is currently 15 foot high but they are middle class wannabees who behave like a pair of chav's who don't even pick up litter in their front and back gardens, anyway I digress, hopefully I'm wrong and the Blackbird chicks are alive and well.
Tomorrow what with weather forecast predicting sunshine or more importantly no rain, I'm off to Kingsbury Water park for some quality birdwatching.
No comments:
Post a Comment