Tuesday 4 April 2017

Small Bird News

We've been regularly but inadvertently disturbing the song thrush which chose the lean-to at the back of the house as a suitable place to build her nest - see story here. However, far from discouraging her as we had expected, she has stuck to her choice of nest site, which means we are now trying very hard not to use the area around it.

It's been a thin winter from the point of view of the number of different species coming to our bird tables - if not the actual numbers, as we've been hosting the usual hoards of chaffinches. One of the species we have most missed is the siskins, of which we usually have at least one pair around throughout the year.

Happily, a female appeared on the peanut feeders this morning, and she was soon joined by....

....her mate.

The rate at which the peanuts disappear will now accelerate, but it's a price well worth paying.
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2 comments:

  1. Unknown5 April 2017 at 08:37

    Here in Foyers the siskins disappear from my garden for the winter and return in substantial numbers around the middle of March (they are here now). Interestingly, I found a dead bird in the garden a few years ago and it had a ring on it. I reported the ring online and received a response to say that the bird had been ringed at Newcastle Upon Tyne a few years previous. That leads me to think that they can migrate quite long distances, for a small bird, to avoid our cold and wet Highland winters.

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  2. Jon5 April 2017 at 09:33

    Many thanks, Tim, that would explain their disappearance this winter. But I wonder why they stayed with us in previous winters. Jon

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