OneGuyFromBarlick

Lovely posts.
I can't remember when I last heard a Cuckoo Moh. At one time you never missed a year without them......

There was a Jenny Wren in my Lilac tree last night, I think it's the first I've seen in the front street. The front street isn't very welcoming to wild life, to many paved front gardens. I am toying with the idea of putting a nest box up and installing a bird feeder... Any advice? They will have the benefit of the Lilac Tree and the mint in summer if they move in!

Not normally a fan of bird boxes they tend to require places that are sheltered and away from general activity. I've got about four scattered about but once installed I never go near them. Birds have their own ideas about what is suitable and what is not.
Bird feeders can give a lot of pleasure. Just make sure that everything you put out is eaten up within the day and doesn't lie on the ground.

plaques wrote: ↑04 May 2018, 16:35Sat on top of the pile was a Wren's nest with four eggs in it. The small greenhouse is now full of wood.

We once went on a week's holiday, leaving a large stack of cut down shrubbery at the back of the garden because we didn't have time to take it to the dump. When we got back it had to be left alone because we found a blackbird nesting in it!

When living in the village we stopped putting out bird feeders because we ended up with so many sparrows and they frightened off all the other small birds. Instead we planted more berry-bearing shrubs and small trees. Here are the sparrows around the bird bath...

That's lovely Tize, how did you keep the birdbaths clean?

We don't seem to have sparrows, our local residents are Jackdaws. There should be more birds in our garden fronts because being traffic free they are very quiet. I shall ponder.....

We don't have many Jackdaws at our altitude the main terrorist are Crows and Magpies. I've a bit of a down on crows. Over the last few years they have this habit of tearing young Hedgehogs apart. I know its all part of nature, red in tooth and claw, but it doesn't sit well with me.

Cathy wrote: ↑06 May 2018, 12:33 That's lovely Tize, how did you keep the birdbaths clean?

Frequent changing of water and scrubbing with a stiff brush, Cathy! It was only this bad when the latest batch of young had fledged and were acting like kids who get their first chance for a cooling dip. The bird bath had a solar panel in the top which powered a pump to bubble water up from the base, out of the top and fall down through the gaps in the edges of those shelves. But it didn't get much sun once the sparrows piled in!

Stanley, there might be too many cats around and/or not enough dense shrubbery for them to hide in.

Plaques, you too are `part of nature' so don't be afraid of deterring the crows! I wonder if crows taste good? The famous `four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' were probably not `blackbirds' but `black birds', i.e. crows or rooks.

Tizer wrote: ↑07 May 2018, 08:44 The famous `four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' were probably not `blackbirds' but `black birds', i.e. crows or rooks.

That's interesting - I've seen rooks for sale - hanging in a row at a game dealer's in the Grainger Market in Newcastle when we lived there in the mid 1970's. I've tried to find some supporting evidence of this - but failed, despite there being several videos of the place on on Youtube. I took it as an indication that the Geordies had a more difficult time than most in the 'hungry thirties'.

Or they could afford cartridges...... I thought about you the other day David and wondered how you were as I haven't heard anything from you lately. What triggered me was buying bulk Lea and Perrins......

On my one and only attempt at a goose shoot my pal always said that if you could get near enough to a crow to shoot it your camouflage must be over 150% effective, Perhaps that's why you don't see many for sale.

My one and only goose shoot was when we were hard up and needed a bird for Xmas dinner. I was successful in that I shot one of our flock at the Hey as they flew back to home. Trouble was, the next year when all the eggs were infertile I realised I had shot the gander.......
Jack was very interested in the drain in the back yard yesterday. I have no doubt there was a rat looking up at us from below the grating.....

Are the swallows and swifts back in force now? How are the frogs doing?

There are a few swallows around here but they haven't started nesting in the barn. We had a lot of frogspawn in the pond but nowhere near as many tadpoles as last year when the pond was overrun with them!

We haven't as many swallows. Found one dead in one of the stables, looked as though it had just dropped off its nest, it's wings were tucked by its sides and there were no marks on it, shame when you think how far they have come.

Tize I only asked how you cleaned the bird baths because it looks like it would have been hard to get into all those areas. I only small bowls for the birds in my back garden but gosh they can get yucky so I too scrub them often. I find whiteking gets them lovely and clean but it also involves a lot of rinsing.

The bath was in two parts, Cathy. The bottom and sides are essentially a box holding the water. The top two tiers are all in one and, yes, they were difficult to clean. The solar panel stopped working after many years of use and we discarded it all when we moved to this house. Now we have a simple, shallow ceramic bowl that was sold for putting like a saucer under a large flower pot. The birds are quite happy to bathe in it and we know there's a hedgehog about so that would be able to drink from it too.

That's interesting Tize as the low shallow bowls that I have are actually pot-plants saucers too, but are shared with a blue tongue lizard.

Do the birds worry about the lizard?

I've never seen them drinking together. I imagine if they see the lizard, they come back later. I have a water bowl out the front as well which is meant to be just for the lizard, it's next to a water pipe that the lizard sleeps in during dry weather, when the birds know the lizard has gone walk about they pinch the water.

I've seen skeins of Canada Geese flying from their roost behind Gill Brow to Whitemoor Reservoir twice in the last two days. First sightings this summer. Sign of the season?

I am impressed every morning by the ground feeding birds in Valley Gardens which ignore both me and Jack until we are about two feet from them. They seem to have no fear.

All of our swallows have been gone a week or two now apart from two. Last time this happened it was an adult and one of the young, the young one died and adult left. Not absolutely sure how old these two are, but I think we have an adult and youngster again.

Brave little birds! I hope they succeed.
The Canada Geese are getting very active. Hardly a sighting all summer but almost daily overflights now.

I thought there were only two, but there are four, so probably a late brood, should go soon hopefully.