Small Bird Report

The Diary isn't the only Ormsaigbeg resident with an interest in small small birds who has noticed that matters are not normal at the feeders. Numbers, in general, are down, this being reflected in the amount of food that's going out each day.

With some species, populations seem much as usual for the time of year: the occasional song thrush visits us, we have a pair of blackbirds who own the place and therefore expend a lot of energy seeing off intruders, and we have robins and dunnocks - the dunnock pictured, who has a white nose and a white feather in his tail, is particularly friendly. The numbers of great and blue tits also seems normal.

Needless to say, we 'enjoy' the usual plethora of chaffinches, but the house sparrows, which seemed to be doing so well in the summer, have suffered, so we're left with a hardy few squabbling with the chaffinches for a chance at the seed.

By late autumn there were plenty of goldfinches in the fields feeding at the thistle seeds, but these have largely disappeared - yet none have switched their attention, as they usually do, to the peanut feeders. Greenfinches also seemed to be doing better this summer, but we now only see them occasionally.

But there are some serious absences. We haven't seen a siskin in ages and, while we saw one very briefly, we've lost our coal tits. The only addition we have to our menagerie is a pair of collared doves, who aren't too welcome as they have a huge appetite compare, say, to a humble dunnock.

While a marauding sparrow hawk may be partly to blame for the situation, the serious fall in numbers seemed to coincide with the prolonged wet weather during the later part of September and the whole of October. Now that we are sitting in a run of westerlies, and with significant rainfall amounts again - yesterday was a pleasant exception - the outlook for our small birds isn't too rosy.