Garden Birds

We’ve had birdfeeders in the garden for many years. 

There’s a ‘bird feeding station’ with a small table and water bowl, a fatball feeder (with both bought and homemade), a mesh cylinder for seeds, and the globe for lumps of big stuff (old Xmas puddings etc).  Anything that drops from them is picked up by ground feeding birds, the hedgehog and goodness knows what else.

The Sunday before last, at the Whitley Bay Station Green Beans Market I bought a new bird seed feeder from JoolsTable; a clear plastic one with perches.  I hung it up in the ballerina apple tree and the other morning was rewarded by the sight of a greenfinch feeding from it.  I've suspected they were around, having seen sudden flashes of lime green that vanished too soon, but this confirmed it.  Looking out of the back bedroom window yesterday morning I noticed another, slightly less vibrant, greenfinch joining him on a twig near the feeder.

Which means our garden is now visited by pairs of blackbirds, woodpigeon, collared doves, robins, great and blue tits, finches both green and gold, families of starlings, magpies and at least one dunnock, wren and crow.

But of course almost all were absent during the hour I did the Great Garden Birdwatch earlier this year.