At last the season has changed to real Summer weather, hot & sunny here at present & this is bringing out the best in the bird world. Though I showed you in the last post we have had our failures with the Wagtail being predated & the Buzzard having the baby Pheasant, we have also had our successes. Loads of Blackbirds, we have had up to seven youngsters coming down for the sultanas at the back door & the first couple of shots show an adult female having just got out of the bird bath & sunning itself, after all it’s breeding, well deserved.
It seems though that there are a lot of second, even third broods in progress as can be in the next shot of a male filling it’s beak with sultanas to take back to the nest. Once the babes have fledged the parents tend to bring them down to feed rather than them filling their beaks in this manner.
The next shot is of just a few of our many Siskins on our feeders, normally if you are far enough away you will see over 20 on the feeders, but they are very easily frightened, as the Sparrow Hawk is always around. Any chance of getting close for a shot of the gangs of them is ruined because of this. These lovely birds are also bringing their young to the feeder or collecting food & going off to their nest to feed the babes. I would say the population of Siskins with us at the moment are treble the numbers when we had the ringing session.
Sparrows can be found all over the world & in my opinion are a much forgotten species that people just take for granted. Tree Sparrows are really disappearing from Britain & surprisingly House Sparrows are also in decline. When we moved here there were plenty of House Sparrows in the village & the other small hamlet 500yds away from ours, but none with us. So we had a mission to get them to come just that little further UP the glen to us. I built 3 Sparrow hotels, Sparrows love to live in communities & by having 3 separate nest boxes in one block they prefer that. Took us two years but we did get some residence in the garden, as far as I am aware this year we had three boxes where they bred & these youngsters are now fledged, but still relying on the parents to feed them. So the last two shots are of a lone babe on the lawn (you can still see the yellow line by it’s beak that makes the mouth look bigger for the parents to find) & 3 of the 5 babes up on the garage roof waiting to be fed. I of course was waiting for mum or dad to turn up with food for that perfect shot, but the babes decided to go find them instead of waiting. Typical youngsters spoiling my photography.
While this great weather lasts I intend going out & getting some wild meadow flower shots in the next couple of days, so watch this space.
