Feathered Friends

Just outside my lounge window, I have a very old winter jasmine bush growing against the kitchen wall. It's dense, about a foot to eighteen inches thick, and this year - I have a robin nesting in it!

We've tried to catch some of her activity on our birdcam, but for some reason we can't seem to capture the robin as she (apparently only the females build the nests) dives in and out of the bush, about two feet away from the window. 

It's been brilliant to watch; she started off with beakfuls of leaves, and over the last two days we've seen her switch to moss, and now she's found either some hair or very fine grass. She approaches the bush along the fence, gets to a certain point, and watches for a while. Presumably to make sure no-one's nearby. Then she darts into a slightly more open bit of the jasmine, where I can see her hopping along the branches to the nest. Then out pops a little red head and chest, she has a quick look round, and then she drops to the floor and flies off to the nearby buddleia. 

One thing I noticed is that she seems to spend a fair bit of time gathering, but doesn't appear to work the material she gathers into the nest at that point; it's almost as though, having gathered the moss or hair, she chucks it into the nest to sort out later! Perhaps she gathers it while she finds it, then sets about making it part of the nest proper when she's gathered enough to work with?

I've also seen her mate feeding her - something I never realised happened until I caught him offering her what looked like a green caterpillar this morning. I had to look it up, because I couldn't understand why an adult bird, that I knew was nest-building, would need feeding. 

Looking forward very much to watching what happens from here on in...and maybe, just maybe, getting a few pictures if we're very, very lucky. 

In the meantime, here's some dodgy phonecam footage instead... (excuse my washing hanging on the line behind!)

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