Garden Birds

Along with other people in Kilchoan, who have reported the same, we seem to have had more small birds in our garden this autumn and winter than ever before.  The local sparrowhawk and the ravages of the weather have steadily reduced the number, but our cats, who used to prey on them even though they're already grossly overfed, have given up harrying them....

....until, a couple of evenings ago, the younger cat disgraced herself by killing one of our precious blue tits.

Counting the numbers of each species visiting us is very difficult, but we know that we have at least five blue tits left as we've seen that number all at the same time.  Yet, when they've finished at the peanut feeders, they seem to fly away to great distances so, despite their diminutive size, there must be blue tits coming in from miles around.

The stars of our bird population at present are the coal tits.  In previous winters, having just one around was cause for excitement, but this winter we have at least four.  They particularly favour the new sunflower seed dispenser - see earlier post here.  They're even smaller than the blue tits, who bully them, for example by chasing them off the feeders.

As always, we're not short of chaffinches: at last count there were over twenty-five at once, feeding on seed.  They're pushy and quarrelsome, but they're also far from bright, the males being even less intellectually gifted than the females.  If the character in this picture looks a bit dazed, he was: he'd just flown into a window and almost brained himself.

Sadly, some of our rarer visitors are missing.  In previous years we've always seen a few siskins, but this winter we haven't seen one.  Perhaps they've been put off by the number of birds milling around in the garden, and will come back when Nature has reduced the numbers further.

All the small birds give us great pleasure, but my favourite remains this one, the dunnock.  They're unassuming birds, minding their own business, and never quarrelling about anything.  They often feed off the bits that the others drop, so they're to be found busying around under the shrubs below the bird feeders.  They're also the friendliest birds, queuing up in an orderly fashion when seed is put out in the half-light of early morning.