March 2015

Feeding birds at this time of year can make the difference between starvation and survival.  Many birds are in their full breeding plumage now and will soon be trying to go beyond survival to fatten themselves in time for the rigours of egg-laying and nestling feeding.

But feeding the birds doesn't just benefit the birds as they can be entertaining to watch and you never know when you will see something unusual.  Just recently we have had more than the usual number of species visiting our feeders – something that alone indicates how much they rely on us feeding them.  We haven’t seen any unusual species but we have noticed behaviour we haven’t seen before and each species has its own style of feeding.

Greenfinches

The blue-tit will visit several feeders and flit from one to another, feeding for a while at each one, sometimes taking a large seed which it will hold with its foot against a branch while it breaks it into smaller pieces.  The coal tit on the other hand, hardly ever stays on the feeder, but takes one seed and flies off to a safer place.  Perhaps it’s a measure of the cold weather and the low energy reserves that we have recently seen one staying on the feeder while it ate several seeds.

We have also seen long-tailed tits on the feeders.  This is unusual because long-tailed tits hardly ever go on the feeders.  Long-tailed tits usually fly around in a noisy mob for most of the year and will sweep through the garden mopping up insects before moving on to the next feast.  During the breeding season, however, they abandon the mob and pair off ready for nesting and when the chicks have fledged will join up into mobs again.  At first we saw one that was on its own, but the other half of the pair joined it a few days later.

Juvenile Goldfinch

Birds are split into two halves when it comes to feeders – maybe three halves if you count the ones that never feed in gardens.  There are the species that seem happy on the feeders – blue-tits and great tits, goldfinches, greenfinches and house sparrows, and then there are those that feed on the ground, picking up scraps underneath the feeders, like dunnocks and wood pigeons.   There are also others (a fourth half maybe?) that are at home either on the ground or on the feeders, like starlings or chaffinches.  There are also a few species that would really like to use the seed  feeders but are not agile enough to be able to balance on the small perch.  (That doesn’t include wood pigeons that are just too darned big!)

We have robins visiting the garden but in the past they have been amongst those that can’t perch but just try to hover long enough to grab a seed or two in passing.  We have one robin however, that seems to have taught himself (or herself) to perch comfortably like other birds and to eat his fill.  We don’t know if it’s just one individual that does this or if there are a few.  There are two robins that claim our garden as their territory, so if they have both learned the trick it will be interesting to see whether they pass the skill onto their chicks.  We just need some warmer weather now so they can get on with it.

Great Spotted Woodpecker