APRIL 2009 - Intelligent Wood Pigeon?

Thursday 30th, one of the local Wood Pidgeons that regulary visits the garden has over the past few days developed a taste for sunflower hearts. He...or she...will perch on the side of a small wire tray and lean forwardtowards the lantern feeder where the sunflower hearts are held. But each time the Pigeon samples the food from the latern, it will start to swing. Well the Pigeon has his...or her work cut out and will frantically try to keep balance by flapping its left wing whilst meeting the incoming swing of the lantern. This is the third occasion we have observed this phenomimen and the bird has adapted by using its right wing/shoulder joint to steady itself to the pole of the feeder! Just watch the short video.

APRIL 2009 - Bempton Cliffs visit.

Wednesday 29th, the day was sunny and very mild but on the cliff tops it was decidedly blustery that necessitated the wearing of a jacket in the afternoon. A rich diversity of bird life in one location; seabirds off the the cliffs and passerines around the farmland. As can be seen in the video below, Tree Sparrows are quite numerous. High up on the walls of the Field Centre are nest boxes that the Tree Sparrows use and I am told they have already laid eggs. Other Passerines that I saw were Meadow Pipits, (left) Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Skylarks and Wagtails. This was my first visit to Bempton Cliffs since May 2000 when I went there with a friend of mine, Neil. If you are reading this Neil, it hasn't changed at all. Everything is still very much the same! Arriving there at 11:30am, the car park was all ready full. I wasn't expecting that on a week-day. Anyway, loaded up with scope, tripod and rucksack which contained my digital and video cameras, I set off.

The views were just splendid! Clear blue sky reaching down to an off-blue sea. The cacophony of noise from the Gannets was the first thing that struck me. At certain places, when the breeze caught the odour of fish...that was quite strong, but that's all part of the great outdoors! The seabirds that were present in large numbers; Gannets, Guillemots, Razorbills, Kittiwakes were mostly perched on the shear cliff faces in groups. Several groups of each particular bird were dotted along the cliffs in various locations.

By far the largest numbers of seabird present were the Gannets. A very tidy looking and large bird. Their groups/colonies were very active. Many birds had already paired-up but there were still others who appeared to be waiting for their mates to return and others just cruising around looking to form a partnership. The immature Gannets were easy to spot as they will still show streaks of black on the body and wings. After about 4/5 years the immatures will loose this pied appearance to a sleak all white except for the wing-tips that remain black and the distinctive yellow head.

But the seabird that I had come to see, the Puffins, hadn't returned from their winter feeding grounds yet. A warden advised me to visit again in mid-May. This I certainly will! On the farmland there are various passerines and the most numerous appear to be the Tree Sparrow, Skylark, Meadow Pipit, Greenfinch and Goldfinch. All of which I got some good views!! Bempton Cliffs RSPB is a very rewarding location to observe birds of differing types!!

APRIL 2009 - Siskin & Goldfinch in the garden!!

Monday 27th, and in the heavy rain we had a visit from a SISKIN on the feeders. Melanie took some video of the bird on the niger feeder. The fact that the Siskin is eating from the niger is unusual...or is it? A Goldfinch also spent time before the Siskin on the niger feeder...only ONE again! The Goldfinch also tried a few other feeders out too!



But not content with visiting the feeders once, the SISKIN comes back this afternoon to the niger feeder! The bird was very accommodating. It even waited for me to return from a visit to town. Melanie again took this footage. But the Goldfinch didn't make a return visit!

APRIL 2009 - Sandra's Garden Birds!!

Monday 27th, a friend of ours, who lives about 200 yards away as the Crow flies, has sent us these photos of the birds in her garden. The garden gets visited by flocks of Goldfinches and Greenfinches at a time... and we get the odd solitary one! I believe that it is down to the type of trees that surround her street whereas our street has no trees and we only have conifers in the garden. The photo of the MISTLE THRUSH with the worms is, you'll agree, a very good image. She also managed to snap this Sparrowhawk female with a recent Wood Pigeon kill! Sandra gets such a wide diversity of birds, even a GREAT SPOTTED WOODPECKER visited her garden last week!!!!

APRIL 2009 - Blackbird & Sparrows in the House & visit to Potteric Carr

Sunday 26th, we have located the second nest of the female Blackbird from Family 'Set-B' and it is in our garden...maybe about ten inches from her first nest! Well, she's going to stay close to where the food supply is and we are it! The back door has to stay shut when not feeding the birds as we have found...to our cost that the Blackbirds (female and male) along with House Sparrows, are coming into the kitchen in search of mealworms! In one instance this afternoon at 5:45pm, the female Blackbird must have sneaked into the kitchen, found there was no mealworms available and flew upstairs where she left little packages in the study. All this while we had visitors too! Anyway Melanie managed to open the window and out she flew...sorry no pictures are available! Five minutes later, she was at the back door for feeding!

The House Sparrows are also being very bold. They have started to come into the kitchen if the door is left adjar. While at Potteric Carr this afternoon, I received a phone call and it was my wife telling me that 3 Sparrows and the Blackbird female were stood on the kitchen floor waiting to be fed.

APRIL 2009 - Blackbirds feeding new family?

Saturday 25th, well what do ya know? The Blackbird adults of Family 'Set-B'....you remember them...we had two nests of Blackbirds in the garden and we labeled them Set-A' and 'Set-B'. Well, it seems that having fledged, originally what we think we 3 chicks, they are now collecting mealworms for the new family! As it turns out, this scenario has shown us some interesting Blackbird behaviour. At the beginning of the week, the adult male had the sole task of constantly feeding the two surviving fledglings, which are now as large as he is! Any way, he started bringing them to the back door for mealworms. At first they were a bit apprehensive as you would expect. Now the number of times that they would tun up for food would be six or seven a day! By last Wednesday, the fledglings were quite at ease with the situation and would accompany their parent, who would dutifully feed them with our mealworms. They became so used to the situation that both of them started feeding themselves from the back door. Whenever the door is open they were there. If the adult female was around, she would shoo them away and grab any mealworms for what we think must be a new batch of hatched chicks. She steadfastly refused to feed the fledglings!


Now as of yesterday, the male is refusing to feed the fledglings and is collecting mealworms with which he flies off in the same direction as the female. He will even go so far as to attack the fledglings if they try to steal a mealworm or two. So is this must be indicative of Blackbird behaviour, indeed other birds may behave the same to their offspring?

APRIL 2009 - St. Georges Church Mistle Thrushes.

Thursday 23rd, during the early evening in the grounds of St. Georges Church, on St. George's Day, I encountered a couple of Mistle Thrushes and about 2 dozen Goldfinches. Unfortunately I didn't get a footage or stills of the noisey Goldfinches but I did manage to capture some of the Thrushes! Quite exceptional, these birds!p>

Talking of Goldfiches, earlier in the day, Melanie my wife got this footage of a very rare event in our garden, of a Goldfinch on the niger feeder!

APRIL 2009 - Potteric Carr NR

Sunday 19th, went over to PCNR for the last 4 hours of daylight. Not an awful lot that I saw except for some notables on Huxter Well; Avocets, Little Ringed Plover and a couple of Redshanks along with a single Oystercatcher. No sign of the Wheatear or the Black-necked Grebes that I was looking for. But a pleasant early evening! This image of the Oystercatcher was digiscoped using a hand-held compact to the eyepiece of my scope.

APRIL 2009 - Return of Blackbird youngsters!

Having not seen the Blackbird chicks since they fledged a couple of weeks ago, it was reassuring to see three on the shed roof earlier this week. Now, as you will recall, we had two sets of Blackbird families hatched in the garden. Each nested yielded at least three chicks. We called the nest by the back door, family 'Set-A' and the nest high up in the conifers, family 'Set-B'. Well 'Set-A' hatched three of the four eggs. family 'Set-B' hatched three eggs of an unknown original quantity of eggs.

The three fledglings from family 'Set-A' soon dispersed from the garden, we believe to adjoining gardens, but the adult male Blackbird still was observed (and still is around, as he frequently has aerial fights with the male from 'Set-B') in the garden digging for worms and accepting mealworms. The adult female Blackbird has gone and has not been seen since the chicks fledged. She built a second nest in our garden but never occupied it. We can only assume that she has taken-up with another male or has perished!

Meanwhile, both the male and female adults from 'Set-B' are constantly making noisy demands of us to be fed mealworms!!! It's the male that does all the feeding of the fledglings. The female appears to completely ignore the fledglings if they are anywhere near her! She will not feed them at all! Though she will take food for herself. Now, she maybe on another nest, we don't know, but the male still defers to her if she's around and wants first dibs at the mealworms! So it was good to see three fledglings this morning, on the shed roof...being fed by two males! Whose belong to who? A fledgling even came to the back door with the male from 'Set-B' (both males can clearly be separately identified) to be fed and this is when I snapped thee photos!

APRIL 2009 - Hatfield Moor

Easter Bank Holiday Monday and a first visit to Hatfield Moor. A warm day and I took all of my clobber! Scope, bins and cameras weighed me down! I was kitted out for an expedition rather than a stroll through the Moor! Starting over at Ten Acre Lake where it was very quiet. Just a handful of birds. I was told that a Red-Necked Grebe had been seen there in the morning. I and another went in search of it....nothing! Though I did see a Little Grebe on the lake. Maybe this was a mis-identification, who knows? after an hour of wandering about and Avocet flying over and several Canada Geese, we called time. I drove round to the south-end of the Moor, my new acquaintance going home minus the prized photo of the Red-Necked Grebe!



Down at the south-end, it was more promising. Water Fowl on the lake, Pied-Flycatchers on the ground and Chiffchaffs in the trees. I strode-out on my todd. This being a new area, I had only the vaguest of maps on the main noticeboard to guide me! The signs proclaiming: "BEWARE OF ADDERS" didn't help! I had heard from a couple that they were particularly "active this morning!" Fortunately it was getting cooler so the chance of stumbling across one was diminishing all the time. A shame really as I have never seen one and a photo would be something else!



Many Great Tits, Reed Buntings and Chaffinches were seen from a hide overlooking a lake surrounded by moorland. A couple of Great-Crested and a lone Little Grebe were on the lake with the ever-present Coots. Another Avocet flew over. But the highlight of the day was the close encounter with a pair of Skylarks. I have not seen Skylarks for a long long time and to see a pair together was something else! Well... I'm calling calling them Skylarks. They didn't appear to take to flight like Skylarks, and they looked slightly 'dumpier' than the slimmer Skylark. The chap near me was talking Woodlarks, but I'm not so sure. For now, I'll call them Skylarks!

APRIL 2009 - Blue Tits nesting?

A pair of Blue Tits repeatedly visited the garden yesterday tea time. One would gather some material that my wife had put out for them while the other watched. I guess that the Blue Tit acually gathering the material was female and the other was the male escorting her. As shown here, a still image (above), and a short video (below) I shot with my camera.

A Robin was also collecting nesting material, but more in the shape of small leaves and twigs.

The Blackbird family of 'Set-B' are still in the garden. The parents are still visiting the back door for some mealworms. At least one fledgling was seen being fed by the male but we think there are two as he keeps taking food to different areas in the conifers. Meanwhile, the female seems to eat the mealworms herself rather than feeding the offspring! This is down to the male!

April 2009 - More Blackbird chicks fledge!!

As I thought, the Blackbird chicks from the Family 'Set B' were 2 days behind Family 'Set A'. Well today Sunday 5th, they have fledged! Though we can only see 2 fledglings, we suspect that there could be as many as four. Our reasoning is that the Blackbird Mum, (who incidentally we are now feeding mealworms exclusively since Saturday morning) in between feeding the two observable fledglings, goes back to the nest with mealworms. We can hear chirping from the nest too!

The fledglings from Family 'Set A' seem to have flown the garden, so to speak! They are now nowhere to be seen and even the parents are gone. Hopefully the fledglings will have hopped into the adjoining gardens and are being looked after by their parents who would stay reasonably close to their offspring. So they are not coming to the back door to get food, which in a way is a good thing as we don't want them to become too reliant on human intervention!!

APRIL 2009 - Blackbird chicks fledge & leave the nest

Friday 3rd, 15 days after the first chick hatched and 14 days after the other two hatched, all three chicks finally left the nest! I was lucky enough to witness the last two leaving the nest, after getting home from work. The first left the nest an hour earlier. So of the four eggs laid by the female Blackbird of 'Set-A', 3 chicks successfully fledged! The unhatched egg must have been removed by the adults because it was no loger in the nest. We beleive that they may have punctured it and drank the contents and then removed the shell. As for 'Set-B', there is no sign of fledging yet. Both the adults are still taking mealworms up to the nest. I suspect that these chicks are maybe 2 to 3 days behind 'Set-A' in their development.

MARCH 2009 - Feeding the chicks!

Both parents are being tested to the full by the three chicks of 'Set-A'. When the back door is opened in the morning...there they are...waiting. Waiting for the regular handouts of mealworms. Are they reliant on us? I think that certainly when the chicks weresmaller and weaker, the Blackbirds would take every mealworn available and still would if given the chance, to safely fledge their young. Both the male and female are not at all worried about coming into the kitchen to get a beak full of grubs. The chicks are very well developed now as can be seen by the photos. The chicks from 'Set-B' still haven't been seen. This is due to the nest being high up in the conifers, so were are unable to see them. Though the parents of that brood compete quite violently at times with the parents of 'Set-A', for the grubs. We do try to ensure that both sets of parents get an equal share. Today, Sunday 29th, it being mild and sunny the birds were very active. The chicks were seen more often as they raised their beaks to the food-providing parent!