WHAT'S BUZZING OR FLYING NEAR YOU TODAY - 2017

We have hundreds, if not thousands, of honey bees in the garden now. They like the weigela but absolutely love the Allium siculum. As we have hundreds of the Alliums (half of them have opened now) it's lovely to see them climbing in and out of the bells.

Will their honey taste of onions?

 

I now think I have learnt three words of Robin as one of ours has been giving me lessons over the last two years.

The most common word that I understand is 'cat'. That's a continuous fast cheeping sound.
Danger from above, usually, a hawk type bird is three fast cheeps, pause and three fast cheeps - continued until the danger is over.
I've now had my fourth confirmation of a different word, which is for 'Fire'. I've just had another bonfire and my friendly Robin (I call him Stripey as he has a white stripe on the edge of his wing) made the same sound for each bonfire. This is a steady cheeping with a single cheep followed by a one second pause followed by a single cheep etc..

Of course, it may all be coincidence but it happens fairly frequently.

 

A Dover seagull

 

Good afternoon not sure but could be a female Brimstone

 

For many years we've had lots of greenfinches in our garden, more than any other birds, and we did estimate that we could see well over 50 all at one time. They come to the bird feeders but seem to have some sort of hierarchy as they seemed to wait on the branches of the willow to take their turn.

We were only commenting a couple of weeks ago that we hadn't seen any at all but the other day they started coming back and there were, probably, a couple of dozen of them so I quickly rushed out to fill the feeders as they were getting low.