WHAT'S BUZZING OR FLYING NEAR YOU 2020

@CanadianLori This is the robin on our side of the pond in a typical Christmas card setting.

 

This is one of my front garden robins that supervises my work. The other one helps me with the digging. One of the four back garden robins sits on my shoulder when I'm working but the others just keep their distance and dart in for any tasty morsels.



Lewis, who has been pruning the fruit trees for us, said he had a tree creeper hopping around in the Conference pear tree whilst he was working on it. It stayed with him all the time. I must confess that I didn't know what a tree creeper looked like so I may have mistaken it in the past for another bird.

 

@strongylodon We usually have about six robins in the garden all year round. There were three on the bird feeders at the same time yesterday. They never seem to fight when around the feeding area.

I have a feeling that they originate from the same family as they have similar markings. Of course, it could be that all robins have similar markings but some seem quite distinctive.

The one above has a very thin white feather the full length of his right wing and the other front garden robin has the same on either side. The nearest picture, from the internet, is this one that has just a short white feather


One of the back garden robins (the one that sometimes sits on my shoulder whilst I'm digging) has a similar long feather on his left wing with the very fine end of the white feather curling upwards. He has been with me for at least four years.

All three robins are the typical chubby birds but two of the back garden robins are taller and slimmer. As we have so many possible nesting places I'm assuming they all tend to stay in the garden. They have nested in the ivy on the house. One year there were two nests in the ivy - on different walls. One of our conifers is a favourite place for them in its tightly packed foliage


and this frequently has them nesting in it


I keep a very beady eye on the conifer and if I haven't seen any activity in February (can see the tree from the kitchen and lounge) it gets it's early trim. Otherwise it waits until late summer.

The most awkward place for one of them to nest was in the top of a 70 litre compost bag in the greenhouse, in 2016. So we left them to it and got another bag to use. They didn't seem to mind us going in there but we banned anyone else from entering. They, and the chicks left the nest two days after Open Day that year.

We had signs up to keep people away but didn't mention the robins otherwise they would have got too nosy!

 

Some of our girls are back . The pheasants are usually around in the winter but up to recently we have only seen one regular one and one occasionally. Yesterday there were five females and one male.
Only four in this picture


Pheasants have always been around our garden and come in every morning to tidy up under the bird feeders. Some of them also eat from the feeders.

Since Oscar the cat died we have had a lot less pheasants around. He was the cat that was a bird lover and always was friendly and looked after them. The pheasants got used to him

Their babies used to play with him as well. They would run around him whilst he was sunbathing (haven't got a picture of him with them but they were always playing on the patio where he sunbathed)