Garden News - 31st May 2011

It's now over 10 years since I started recording the wildlife in my garden for the BTO's Garden Birdwatch Scheme. At the beginning birds such as the Starling were a regular feature in my weekly lists, but over the next years this gradually changed, until they became a real rarity!

Imagine my surprise then this morning when I woke up to the sound of a family party feeding in the garden. Looking out of the window I was really pleased to  see a group of approximately 15 birds, a mixture of adults and juveniles, squabbling over the meal worms that I'd put out. I grabbed the camera and managed to get this shot before they disappeared again.

Starlings

These are the first juvenile Starlings that I've seen this year, but as mentioned previously, the garden has been full of young birds from other species for a couple of weeks. New in this week were Woodpigeon, Magpie (2 from the nest at the bottom of the garden), Dunnock, Goldfinch and Chaffinch (a first for the garden).

Juvenile Dunnock (very streaky)