Four-and-twenty blackbirds

[rich p]

Your gardening is ecologically sustainable for native wildlife, providing a much needed range of habitats to help wildlife thrive.

My wife is desperate to see a kingfisher, she never has. Can we pop in next time I'm in Norfolk Waffly?

 

[wafflycat]

My wife is desperate to see a kingfisher, she never has. Can we pop in next time I'm in Norfolk Waffly?

You most certainly can. I can't however guarantee that there'll be a kingfisher in attendance on any given day!

Edit: I could paint the hens blue and make them do their kingfisher impersonations if that would help...

 

[Amanda P]

Should you find yourself visiting York-ish, I can take you along a stretch of the Foss which will give you about a 50% chance of seeing a kingfisher. Walk it on two occasions and you'd be unlucky not to at least hear one. (They sound like a bosun's whistle).

 

[Arch]

Our peak blackbird count stands at 26 as of today.

First thing in the morning, they seem desperate to feed and will tolerate each other quite close. Once they've fed a bit, they become irritable and spend more time chasing each other.

A majority of them are males. I wonder where the females have gone?

Shopping?

Just before Christmas I saw 4 blackbirds in the berry laden hedge next to Sainsburys - since I gather the 'calling birds' of the song are blackbirds, I thought it rather appropriate. Come to think of it, there were 3 females to one male, so they were shopping!

 

[Glow worm]

My wife is desperate to see a kingfisher, she never has. Can we pop in next time I'm in Norfolk Waffly?

There's a Sainsburys supermarket (another one!)in Cambridge with a small beck by the side of it. (and a nice path alongside for cyclists/ walkers). The stream's full of the usual crap (trolleys and rubbish) but amazingly, the kingfishers love it and I gaurantee you'll see one after a while. Maybe not as scenic as mid Norfolk though! (I've seen water rail and tawny owls near there too - only about a mile from the city centre).

 

[Glow worm]

Had a few Scandinavian visitors here too: Fieldfares.

The usual suspects we get here are blackbirds, thrushes, collared doves, great tits, blue tits, coal tits, chaffinches, bullfinches, robins, sparrows, dunnocks, wrens, pheasants. There's the odd sparrowhawk in residence, and it takes more birds than the felines. And don't get me started on magpies... I love birds, but I *loathe* magpies.

Now I'm jealous! We don't get any bullfnches hereabouts and I'd love to see them again- beautiful birds.

 

[Glow worm]

In some species, females migrate to different places than males. I don't know if that's true of blackbirds, but it's looking like it might be.

There was a great story a few years back of the ringed male blackbird called Roger from Thetford in Norfolk who used to spend every winter in the same garden - in Newton Abbott in Devon! See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...ackbird-that-takes-its-holidays-in-Devon.html
I guess he's no longer with us but he was quite a local hero hereabouts for a while!

 

[Yellow Fang]

Passed right by a blackbird trying to eat some berries next to a garden wall. I thought it was unusual for a blackbird to allow someone to get so close. I suppose it must have been getting pretty hungry.

 

[Gromit]

We have a little robin living in the glasshouse at college, he/she is getting fat on the black and white fly who are living on my peas.

 

[wafflycat]

I know my place.

I was still in the process of stirring from my overnight slumbers and MrWC informed me that I was in demand. "It's my lucky morning!" I thought. But no, alas, I was not to be *that lucky*. Uggbre!

MrWC went on to tell me that my public awaited me and were lined up in the garden. Sure enough, they were. My public consisted of what seemed to be the entire wild bird population of mid-Norfolk inhabiting my garden. A couple of the cheeky blighters (a male blackbird and a robin) were on the windowsills tapping on the glass (really, they're quite impolite, but during the warmer months, if I have a window open there's a robin that will fly in to steal food from the cats' dishes, so perhaps it's learnt behaviour in the case of the robin.). So before feeding the humans of the household, the bird food was prepared. Instead of making up a batch for the hens as usual, I made two batches; the hens' breakfast and a second lot of Wafflycat's Patent Mix For Ex-Battery Hens for their wild cousins. I saw to my Laydeez first and then cleared areas of snow to put food out for the ground feeding birds and made sure the feeders suspended from the willow branches were full of nuts. The birds were down feeding before I was back in the house.

Only now am I sitting with a cuppa.

 

[Baggy]

Had a few Scandinavian visitors here too: Fieldfares.

We've just spent a wee while trying to identify the mysterious too-big-to-be a-thrush bird that's been lurking aorund the garden for the last day or so. Yup, it's a fieldfare!

Have had loads of feathery visitors that we've not previously seen round these parts before - three bullfinches, a pair of black caps and a small flock of long-tailed tits which are incredibly cute.

Jenny wren has also been grubbing around the edges of the garden.

 

[rich p]

We had a fieldfare and 3 redwings today.

 

[Baggy]

We had a fieldfare and 3 redwings today.

Fieldfares are supposed to travel in flocks, am feeling a bit sorry for our solitary one. Maybe we should arrange a get-together.

 

[wafflycat]

Fieldfares are supposed to travel in flocks, am feeling a bit sorry for our solitary one. Maybe we should arrange a get-together.

I think that is an excellent idea. Now to catch a fieldfare...

 

[rich p]

He was with the redwings so perhaps he found his own thrushes too irritating

Say no to Pilaris!

Old CND joke!

Turdus pilaris