my new friends

the first time a family of blue tits nested in my garden.







[ 08. July 2005, 02:25 PM: Message edited by: steve b ]

 

Nice pics steve, :D

 

Great pics

At the place where I work, they have metal boxes on the external walls at smoking areas for safe disposal of ciggies...this is a metal box screwed to the wall with 2 square holes in it and a pair of great tits nested and brought up a family in it!!.....which makes a mockery of the instructions you get for making nesting boxes that state the ROUND hole needs to be a certain diameter or they won't nest in it

 

lovely birds, I live in a small village and I spend ages watching the birds,finches,blue tits even thrushes this year,everyone around me has loads of bird tables and bird boxes.I also have a pair of resident Robins.If I leave the greenhouse door open the birds are in there eating the ants.But they have snapped my last cucumber plant and it doesnt look like it is going to recover.

 

awww - sweet!!!

But I'm intrigued to see a bird actually eating a lard ball. I've bought and hung heaps of those wretched things and they just hang there and go moldy until I have to take them down and bin them. But they'll make pigs of themselves on the birdtable with seed and stuff!

 

When I saw the pic I was surprised too.
We hung six lard balls during the winter and ended up throwing them away. The birds tucked into everything else though. Strange?

 

Ditto Nathan, Starlings eat everything and anything, perhaps the others dont have starlings?

 

Steveb. What fabulous photo's, I love my garden to bit's i also have an avary, and i feed the wild bird's almost on a daily basis, i swear i go to work every day to keep them all well fed for the forth coming winter. How i love my garden and the wildlife it bring's.

Kind Regards Sallyann.

 

YEP PETE I DO HAVE STARLING BUT THEY CANT GET TOO CLOSE TO THE FAT BALLS AS THEY HANG CLOSE TO A WALL, BELOW WALL HEIGHT AND THE BIGGER BIRDS CAN'T MANOUVER WELL ENOUGH.

 

I was feeding the birds for 6 months before I saw one in the garden. I knew they were eating the nuts and fat balls because they kept shrinking. The Blue Tits, Coal Tits and Sparrows like peanuts I also have a Greenfinch a Robin and a Nuthatch that come and eat my sunflower hearts. I read that Blackbirds and Thrushes won't eat from a bird table, no-one has told my Thrushes this although it is a bit of a squeeze for them. I don't have room for a proper bird table and eventually managed to track one down that you bolt to the wall. My partner claims we have glow worms out the front but I'm not convinced it wasn't just wet grass.

 

Now that is something I would like to have - glowworms - like humming birds, I can dream though.

 

If I had glow worms I'd be out looking for them every night, if you know what I mean. :D
Humming birds are something else!

 

Wouldn't it be something if our climate became mild enough for them to overwinter, the downside would be mild winters pests survive tooooooo.

:(

 

But as I always say Fran, if the pest survives then so will its preditor, if they didn't then how would warmer countries manage.