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)

Linacre - 29th May 2011 - Breeding success!!!

Thankfully I didn't bother to take too much notice of the weather forecast for this morning and got up bright and early and headed down to Linace for a few hours birding. I'm so glad I did, because I managed to some see some good birds, including 2 new species to add to the list of breeding birds, namely Coal Tit and Willow Tit! As well as the birds, the wild flowers on the dam walls haven't been mowed down yet and looked really nice, especially the Ox-eyed Daisies and Birds Foot Trefoil.

Both Coal and Willow Tit are recorded around the reservoirs throughout the year, but up until now, we've never had evidence of actual breeding. This morning, however, I was lucky enough to see 2 family parties of Coal Tit and an adult Willow Tit feeding 2 recently fledged young. Brilliant!!

The Little Grebes on the bottom reservoir are alive and well with a family group of 2 adults and 2 stripey headed juveniles present today. 2 Grey Herons were also seen, including 1 juvenile bird. The traditional site on the middle reservoir hasn't been used this year, so presumably this bird has fledged elsewhere and come to Linacre for the summer. 3 juvenile Magpies were sitting on the edge of their nest and an adult Jackdaw was seen going into the chimney on the house. There were 29 adult Mallards around and 4 different broods of 7, 3, 6 and 5 ducklings. The final piece of news on the breeding front was a juvenile Robin by the middle reservoir, the first of the year.

Several summer migrants were seen and heard around the reservoirs including 8 Swifts, 2 Swallows, 1 House Martin, 4 Chiffchaffs, 3 Blackcaps and 1 Willow Warbler.

Padley Gorge - 28th May 2011

Had a short walk down the gorge this afternoon with Jayne. Despite the fact that it was quite late in the day we still managed to find some great birds doing what birds do best at this time of the year, that is creating the next generations!

First sighting was a family party of Grey Wagtails around the top of the gorge, followed closely by an adult Dipper (my first of the year!). Crossing over the river and returning back up towards the moor we could hear Pied Flycatchers singing and soon found a pair feeding young in one of the nest boxes. Whilst watching these birds we heard a real commotion and, looking up, we could see a male Great-spotted Woodpecker feeding young in a perfectly circular nesthole. The young really do make a noise, calling constantly, even when the adults birds aren't present! Nearby a Wood Warbler was heard singing and a female Redstart was spotted in the trees. Highlight of the day, however, went to the pair of Spotted Flycatchers that Jayne found nest building in a broken off tree stump -well done!! The nest is easily viewable from the main path, so I'll pop back laer this week and get some photos. Until then, here's an adult bird I saw back in 2007 at Barbrook Plantation.

Spotted Flycatcher

Message for Jacob and family!

Apologies for this entry, but I wanted to get in touch with some people who came to the Dawn Chorus Walk last week and whose details I forgot to get. I'll delete this post if I'm successful!

Anyway, I'm hoping that Jacob and his parents are reading this. If you are, and you've still got the Tree Sparrows in your boxes I'd love to pop over and see them. Hope you don't mind me doing this. If you want to get in touch my email is stoppardp@hotmail.com.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Linacre - 22nd May 2011

Spent a few hours down at Linacre this morning checking the nest boxes and dodging the rain showers! The nest boxes were really great today with many full to bursting with more or less fully feathered chicks.

Blue Tit chicks

Great Tit chicks

As well as these well developed chicks a few of the boxes still had very young chicks in such as these below.

Blue or Great Tits (not sure yet!)

It's very interesting to see how the birds react differently when the lid is removed. As you can see from the photos, the older the birds are, the the more likely they are to crouch down low in the nest. The younger birds still react to any movement by opening up their gapes and begging for food, presumably because they are still blind and unaware of the potential danger! I'll be back next week to check on these later broods.

As well as checking the nest boxes I also noted the singing Pied Flycatcher, which unfortuntaely means he hasn't managed to attract a new mate, yet. The Coot's nest from last week is still in place, but was unattended and appeared to have been predated, possisbly by the many Carrion Crows that feed around the reservoirs. The Little Grebe nest was also empty, so hopefully the young have hatched and have been carried off by the adult birds. One Grey Wagtail was spotted, as was the hybrid Canada Goose, 2 Swallows and 3 adult Great-crested Grebes. 2 broods of Mallard ducklings (6 in each), were being fed on the middle reservoir.

The water level in the bottom reservoir had fallen again this week in prepearation for the work, which I beleive will begin next week. More news then.

Bottom Reservoir

Garden News - 21st May 2011

It's been quite a while since I blogged about the birds in my garden, so I thought I'd better update you, especially as there have been some interesting developments this week.

First up is the increase in finch numbers in the garden over the last few weeks. We're very lucky to have good numbers of Goldfinch regularly visiting the feeders to  feast on the sunflower hearts, but this week they've been joined by at least three Chaffinches, a pair of Bullfinches and some absolutely stunning male Greenfinches.These birds all look really bright at the moment and will hopefully be bringing their young in the near future.

Goldfinch and male Greenfinch

Male Bullfinch

Talking of youngsters, this week has also brought the first juvenile birds of the year into the garden. The first was a young Blackbird which appeared today, followed this afternoon by a young Dunnock.

Juvenile Blackbird

The Magpie nest which was featured earlier this year appears to have young in it. I haven't actually seen them as the nest is now completely covered by the leaves, but whilst out in the garden this afternoon one of the adults flew in and chicks could be heard calling.

Finally, "Mr White" a leusistic (partially white) Blackbird that has been living in the garden since September 2010 is still alive and well. I've recently been putting meal worms out to help adult birds feed their young and Mr White has been a regular visitor as the awful photo below shows! Sorry about the photo quality but I had to take it  through  the window!

Mr White

Hopefully it won't be long before the first Goldfinch chicks appear. I'll let you know as soon as it happens.

Bird Atlas Walk - 21st May 2011

I popped out for a few hours this morning to carry out the 3rd walk for my Bird Atlas square, which is in Ashgate, Chesterfield. This was the first walk for this year's breeding season and the weather was perfect with nice sunshine and clear skies. 32 species of birds were seen including 7 new species for this square (Linnet, Whitethroat, Blackcap, Swallow, House Martin, Feral Pigeon and Chiffchaff).
As usual, one of the best parts of doing these surveys is the lovely countryside that I get to walk through, so here is a photo of one of the footpaths I walked down this morning.

Being quite late on in the breding season I was able to confirm breeding for some species with Jackdaw, Blackbird, Robin, Blue Tit and Magpie all seen carrying food. As well as this I also found recently fledged Great Tits and a family party of Long-tailed Tits. House Sparrows were "chirruping" from the eaves of several houses, both House Martins and Swallows were in potential breeding habitat and there was no sign of breeding Starlings this time, so there's still lots of good reasons me to come back for my next and final visit in June.