Mr Squidge's New Toy

 Last October, our cat, Timmy, died. 

Since then, we've noticed rather more birds in the garden, and I've strung feeders round the garden and put out mealworms and seeds regularly. We also put up a couple of bird boxes on the wall of the tree house.

So far, we've seen an overwintering blackcap (male); a pair of grey wagtails (which are actually mostly yellow); a pair of wrens; several robins; blue tits; coal tits; sparrows; great tits; blackbirds; and the ever-present pigeon.

Our visiting male blackcap, on birdcam

The blackcap seems to be camera shy, always choosing to ground feed when the camera's aimed at the bird table or table-feeding when the camera's aimed at the ground feeders. We were just lucky with the photo above...

There seemed to be lots of blue tit activity around the bird boxes - they seem to like one more than the other, perhaps because it's a natural log-fronted one, and the birds will poke their heads inside the hole, checking out whether or not this des-res will be what they need this spring. 

Mr Squidge rather enjoys watching them. So much so, he bought himself a birdcam. Not one that goes inside the birdbox, but a motion-activated trail cam. As a result, we now have several locations around the garden where poles have appeared as camera mounts, and regular 'what's on the camera?' sessions where we see what - if anything - we've caught on film.

One thing we noticed from the videos and still pictures is that the robins are distinctly different in appearance. One has a white patch to the left of his/her red chest, the other has a white patch to the right. A third has a white patch on their wing.  The lilac tree station is preferred by the flock of sparrows which roost in next-door's holly tree, but can only be filmed on a still day. 

Anyway, here for your enjoyment, a couple of clips from the bird table... I may well become a Twitcher in time...

I used to think blue tits only ate from feeders

Mr 'White patch on the right' Robin