Where should I place my bird feeder?

The colder weather is upon us and its time to think about feeding the birds during the cold winter months. If you have not fed the birds in your garden before or you are looking for new places to put up food. Get your cue from watching how the birds use your garden.

Birds follow natural pathways, such as hedges, trees, flower borders and other places where they can naturally move from one place to another without exposing them to much to possible predators. This will include how birds come into and leave your garden.

A few weeks ago I placed a bird feeder in the buddliea in our front garden. It is a natural pathway from sparrows and the occasional blue and great tits. Today, for the first time I saw a pair of great tits and a blue tit feeding from the bird feeder.

Don't be surprised it is takes several weeks for birds to find and use your newly placed bird feeder. This is quite natural.

Magpie

I am not a big fan of magpies as they have increased locally and terrorise a lot of the smaller nesting birds.
That said, everything has its place and has chicks of its own to feed. A recent study by the RSPB found that song birds populations were no different between places where magpies were common and places where they were not so common. no less.

Today our garden was visited by a magpie who seemed unable to fly. It hoped about and fluttered awkwardly up onto the fence but seemed unable to fly. These birds are often very shy and this one did not seem to have the ability to make a quick get away.

It did eventually manage to flutter up onto our conservatory roof.

Toad and newt

Following yesterday blog where I said that we had not seen a toad in the garden since we moved in. Well this evening, my wife spotted this toad on our doorstep while going out (after dark) to pick our daughter up.

Afterwards, when she came home about 30 minutes later, the toad was hiding in the shadows and on the edge of the path was a newt.

Juvenile toad

My wife found a small toad in the garden, floating in the rain water which had filled an empty garden trug. At first she thought it was dead. She managed to scoop the little toad up on an old saucer.

I put the toad in a more suitable location

The year we moved to this house a few years back now, there was toad spawn in the pond. Before we moved in, I found a couple of dead toads in the garden by the pond. The following year we had a small amount of toad spawn and one visible toad. I have not seen any toads in the garden since this one, so I was rather pleased.

Spider web art

 The misty mornings have highlighted, with droplets of moisture, the wonderful architecture of the spider web.

More bat observations

Apologies for lack of entries lately, due to workload and holidays. I am delighted to say the bats are just as active as ever in the track next to my house. I watched them yesterday evening, they now appear about 8.00pm

As our house is at a point where the track bends away, the bats fly straight up the track towards me, loop and head back down the track at about head height.

Some time they also circle the tree overhanging the left (opposite) side of the track, right next to our house.

Its great to watch them flying back and forth, which goes on for about 25 minutes before they move on. I had been hoping borrow a bat detector to determine species, but no luck I think they are pipistrelle, but its quite dark. But I managed to get a few reasonable pics this time. There at least two bats that were visible at the same time.

Sun flowers

I have been really pleased this year that 9 out of the eleven sunflowers I planted have exceded 6 foot (my height). Not bad for sunflowers grown in a pot.

They have been visited by a few bees, but have been particularly attractive to hoverflies, often as many as six just on one flower.