Garden Birds and wild birds thread.

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Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Never, ever get tired of the piercing cheeriness of the blackbird's song when they get going in spring. There's a really cheeky one that gets going from a tree close to my house just before it gets light, every morning. Fucker keeps waking me up!
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Love the blackbirds.
Also love whistling back at the robin mimicking whatever phrase he last puts together.
It becomes a call and response. You can see him getting very interested where it’s coming from.
I believe they are very territorial.
 
mancity2012_eamo said:
Love the blackbirds.
Also love whistling back at the robin mimicking whatever phrase he last puts together.
It becomes a call and response. You can see him getting very interested where it’s coming from.
I believe they are very territorial.
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The Blackbird is the first to start the Dawn Chorus,...and is often the last Songbird heard in the evening.
 
burnley blue mcfc said:
A local photographer here in burnley posted an amazing split/sec pic of a barn owl with a vole being ambushed by a kestrel!! i wish i knew how to post the pic its stunning
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If you can be arsed you can get it scanned somewhere (i.e. local newsagents or photocopy shop), and have them send it on to your e-mail address. From there it’s a simple matter to post it through Imgur (that’s how I posted a photo of Joy Division in Stockport on here).
 
the M6 was the easiest place to spot a kestrel, apparently looking for road kill, nowadays much more likely to see a pair of buzzards, again scavenging, and quite often being harassed by crows. Herons were pretty rare in cities, now common maybe due to garden ponds and natural habitat deprivation. Seeing one on the ground close up is quite a shock, the beak is huge and the bird is about four foot tall. With chicks to feed they will empty a garden pond of fish, unless you fit a net, and that can be a problem trapping hedgehogs and garden birds.
Bird tables that pigeons can land on often lead to rat infestation, due to seed being scattered by the pigeons.
One of the most common birds, the wren, i found the hardest to photograph, they seem to ignore seeds and look for tiny insects, never stay more than a few seconds, and they nest deep into hawthorn hedges and the like.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Great shot. He appears to have been tagged in some way. He (or she?) looks ready to bolt. He’s looking at you and thinking, "Now is that thing he’s holding some sort of rifle?".
By the way, is Idaho ever not under snow?
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You’re right, She had definitely been tagged with some kind of monitoring device from Fish and Game. We get a lot of Mule deer in town in Winter, I think they must get the Hunting regs and know there’s not a season on them. There was a tiny fawn just behind her and she wandered around for over an hour,didn’t pay us any attention other than a few long stares.
The snow does leave for a short while, gets pretty hot in the summer :)
 
simmo said:
Today for the first time I saw a Blue Tit go into one of the bird boxes I have put up.
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Reminds me of watching a pair of Great tits a few years back....
In the back garden there was an Apple tree where,for years ,Blue Tits had nested in a hole in the tree ,year in ,year out...

One afternoon i watched a Male Great Tit,along with the female..visit from a neighbouring garden.....The Male quickly showed the female where the nesting hole was...then stood aside,as the female went down inside to inspect it....The male,then burst into song,a rousing,passionate ditty...along the lines of " ive found a mate,and ive found our new home" it was just a joyous outburst of Love....and excitement.
All members of the Tit family enjoy comparatively short life spans..18 months is a good innings...but boy do they pack so much energy into every single second of their lives,never ever sit still and rarely silent.
A joy to watch.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Am I right in thinking it's Canada geese along the Ashton canal towpath? If so, they're unpleasantly aggressive at times.
Although it's well known that geese in general can be very territorial.
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Talking of aggression..saw two Male moorhens on a canal walk in derbyshire...engage in a huge intense,territorial fight on Friday morning. I watched from the orher side of the water as both birds went at it hammer and tounge....then...suddenly,.. one bird dived underwater..leaving the other paddling alone...at this point i stopped walking.as i could feel it was a "Jaws" momemt coming on......sure enough,about 45 seconds later the submarime Moorhen burst up out of the canal to continue its attack,and the two males fought vigorously for about a min on water,then tumbled onto the bank,then continued,backwards up a slight incline.out of sight.
Territory is so important ,out there,in Nature...and the Water Rail family of birds..Do love a good scrap.on land,or on water.
 
We've got loads of red kites in our area, but we still managed to get a massive rat infestation last year.

As far as I can make out, they'd often kill one but not eat it, as we found plenty of untouched corpses. There's surely no way our local pussies were the ones efficiently slicing these fat bastards once then leaving them to die - the moggies stick to the back gardens.

I wonder why the kites apparently chose not to eat the rats, tho. Probably saving space for posher stuff like rabbits, or stuff we leave around.

Anyway the lesson here is, the only way to get anybody to do anything these days is to shame them on facebook. After a year of doing nowt, the housing association finally sent in the exterminators after ONE facebook post.
 
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