Hobbies and Crafts

I am getting loads more birds in my patio....just the blue and great tits, pigeons (groans) and a very fat blackbird, and a lovely bird who looks like a robin but with the red on his back! I left a whole brioche for them (to avoid me eating it all) and they wolfed it down. *frets..hope that was ok... BC XX

Cooee:o)

l have just fed the birds for the 2nd time today, they just love the pasta and spuds:o)

l cooked the pasta yesterday and gave them some then, this last lot l put in my mixer machine with a baked spud and its disapearing at the rate of knots!! Stillnot made the fat ball cake:o(

All sorts out there to day, but nothing different, apart from dog trying to pinch some of the mix.....grr lol

The snow came last night and went this morning!

c yeh

jude :o) x

OK will do.

Hiya....yeh send it to me via email then l'll try and post it. l have received some from someone else via micorsoft doc, but l can't find a way to transfer it. l'll have a look and see how you can transfer it if l can't!!

jude :o) x

Well i looked at the blog and it looks good but haven't a clue how to add a comment when it asks to 'pick a profile'. I don't 'do' blogs so am a bit dense here.

Have a couple of robin photos but can i up load them Jude or do they have to come to you to do it?

Ann,

When I was last at RSPB Titchwell, in Norfolk, a robin hopped into the car to share our sarnies. Would have taken a photo but he was too close to get in focus!

Raining in Shropshire now - not making much impact on the snow though. About four dozen house sparrows are currently having a noisy pow-wow on the back patio trellis. Hope they're not going to send a delegate to complain to me about the weather!

DM x

Raining pretty hard here this morning although snow forecast for parts of Gloucestershire later, hopefully it will not be the valley. Just been to stock up on more seed for the feeders and suet. The fat cake I made yesterday has disintegrated in the wet and the birds are not keen on it now, except we had a blackcap that seemed to be enjoying it this morning.

Dormouse, I am sure that you are right although by the ferry not too many walkers would eat. He was lovely though, and we saw a lot more robins in the lake district than we have seen around here lately. Outside the apartment which is in a big old country house we had several. we were feeding them on top of one of the wall pillars with ground nuts.

Ann
Glos

Morning all,

Jude, I have been bird-watching as long as I can remember. Not just birds, wildlife in general. I took it up more seriously (ie paid a scary amount of money for good binoculars and telescope) about ten years ago. I do keep a record of the birds I've seen but I am not a twitcher. I generally go out with a couple of friends who are also keen on watching rather than just ticking off a new species. If we don't see many birds, well at least we'll have had a nice walk. We do meet twitchers occasionally on our travels but I don't see the point in haring all over the country, just building up a list. Twitchers are like genealogists who have 25,000 people in their tree but don't know anything about any of them.
It's lovely when I do see a bird I've never seen (like last week's hawfinch) but I also love watching the day-to-day goings on in the garden. I'm also thrilled when I see the first swallow of the year, and I can sit for hours and watch puffins coming and going.

Morning...its still pretty cold here, but not as bad as last night.More snow due later today, and its raining!!

Y/Caz... ours blackbirds just take over the lawn along with the w/pigeons. They're all bossing one another about at the moment, probably pairing up, or do they pair for life. Its quite funny to watch :o)

l think l'll have to cook up some more pasta, its all gone from yesterday.

Dormouse......our robins use the tables and hover for the droppings too. How long have you been birdwatching,your very knowlegeable? we're not twitchers in the sense that we go out for a days b/watching, but l can see the attraction to it, its fascinating just watching them in the garden. We do go to RSPB sites occasionally, probably more when we lived in Sussex. Our daughter is very keen and willspend the day somewhere, but does'nt get alot of time.
l'd like Nick Knowles and his mates to come and do a project on our garden and set up the night camera's.......now that would be great:o)

jude:o) x

Jude one of our blackbirds hovers and sometimes manages to get a peanut out. He sits for ages watching the other birds and tries it out for himself. Birds are much cleverer than we give them credit for aren't they.

Caz xx

Hi everyone,
Still snowing in Shropshire and more forecast. Still plenty of birds flitting about on the feeders. Noticed that all the holly berries have now been eaten.
Ann - your Windermere robin will come from a long line of birds that have learned that tourists/walkers etc = food!! It is astonishing how fearless they are - at one reserve we visit, they practically mob each new carload of visitors as they arrive in the car-park and the word goes out on the bird-line. (What you got? Let's see - oooh, over here fellas, this lot have got GRANARY bread!!!)
Caz - we have robins that have learned to 'hover' by feeders. It's because we tend not to put any food on the ground (having 3 Cavalier King Charles Spaniels who just eat it) so all the ground feeding birds have had to adapt and evolve! (David Attenborough would have a field day in our garden... :)

Hello Ann....who's a lucky lady then? next time you go walking make sure you have some seed with you!!

York Caz....well done to those blackbirds:o) l don't think lhave seen our robin hanging onto the nut feeder!! everything else has had a try though...lol except blackbirds!
Men ahhh...lol:o)

jude:o) xx

Hello everyone, not been on for a while but still reading. We still have all the snow from last Tuesday, even at the sides of roads, and it's started again this afternoon.
We have had all the usual birds all day it seems, great, blue,coal and long tailed tits, robin, dunnock, sparrows etc. They seemed to have been stocking up as if they knew the snow was coming back.
My hubby said the other day, 'isn't it good how the robin has learnt to cling on to the feeder', he never thought to tell me so I could see it. I said I had seen it hovering and taking seed, he said oh, that's the other one, Men!

During the week we heard the blackbirds making a right racket, looked out of the window in time to see two of them chasing the heron away from the tree where feeders are, the pond is at the bottom of garden so don't know why it was up the top end.

Hope we don't get too much snow this time.

Caz xx

We just have rain/sleet at the moment. I did put a home made fat cake out lunch time and it has not been eaten, unfortunately it has broken up in the rain, just hope there are not any rats around s i don't want to encourage them. Thought we would have lost the birds while we were away but as soon as we refilled the feeders they came back.

When we were in the Lake District wewere walking near the Windermere ferry on the Hawkeshead side, a robin flew onto the wall next to us, we stopped and 'chatted' to it 9as you do), unfortunately we had no food with us of any sort so we walked on, crossing over the lane, the robin followed us and hopped along the wall beside us. we stopped again to take its photo and I put my hand out expecting to frighten it away but it hopped nearer. It was a very young one so I wondered if it had been hand reared. I felt so guilty that I didn't have any food. we walked on, crossing the road into the wood and it followed for a while sitting on tree branches in front of us, then we got back to the car so it flew off. Lovely experience to be so close and i got a lovely photo.

Ann
Glos

Glenys....Vic says your welcome:o)

Its snowing again here and raining, and there is a snow blizzard in The Forest of Dean, where my nephew lives its still 8 - 10" deep!!
D i l just text to say the A40 from monmouth to the M50 has heavy snow now!!

Blackbirds, robins, chaffinch are around most of the day, C/doves are courting, bless em:o)) sparrows, b/g/c/tits, starlings,dunnocks, jackdaws and a magpie are about on and off most days.

BC - we have wooden slats up the front and back of our house and l have seen mouse dropping on there!!! but as far as we know they are'nt indoors, gawd l hope not!!!! don't know how they get to the wood cause below that is white almost shiney paint!!

D/Mouse - we fed them some left over spagette this morning, think its all gone. Must have a go at making fat balls the bought ones are'nt being eaten very fast.

Bellblair,Linda and anyone else looking in - whats it like where you are? have you seen any different birds?

jude :o)x

Hi, just seen this thread again after 2 days(?).

Jude, give Vic a hug from me will you please, bless him. :-))
Thank Gawd he was around at the time.
x

Thank you Jude and DM...will go shopping tomorrow although I must say there is a lot of activity out there! The only thing I am wary of is a return of the mice who absolutely loved the droppings from the bird feeders last year. Took me months to get rid of them. So I am now very careful to clean up when I can. BC XX

ps...I have no garden just a small patio in the middle of London so any stray bird is very welcome:-)

Hi everyone,
BC, To attract goldfinches and siskins to your garden, you need to put out nyger (sometimes spelt niger) seed. These are tiny black seeds that require a pyrex tube style feeder - any mesh style feeder won't contain the seeds.
Thrushes, inc. fieldfares etc, will come for sliced windfall apples and other fruit. Black sunflower seed (softer shelled than the black/white stripey sunflower seeds) will prove popular with a variety of birds like tits and finches.
Leftover pasta, pastry, bacon rind, suet, hard cheese, etc will attract lots of birds and give them extra energy during this cold snap. Make a bird cake by melting some suet or lard and then stirring in a variety of seeds and kitchen scraps, chopped nuts, bread crumbs etc. Shape it, wait for it to go solid and then pop it out for the birds to fight over.
Hopefully, you'll get some new species visiting your garden.

Slushy here this morning after more overnight snow.

Birds around early for food, so bucked myself up and put it out for them.

Very dark, reacon we'll have more snow shortly.

Linda :o)

Morning....its freezing here with loads more snow, still snowing and more forecast!!!
Our family weekend gathering has been cancelled too risky:o(((((

We had a heron on backfence this morning, as l opened curtain it landed then took off!! It was like something out of a dineasore (sp) film landing, and so graceful!! aparently it has visited next door allweek and taken allhis fish apart from 2 big ones......ooops!!

All birds feeding well out there now, l'm going to cook some more potatoes in a mo, l put grated lard out earlier, we ran out of suet. The shops seem to have run out os suet aswell, its very hard to get:o(

l wonder how the little wagtail is now that got tangled up, he still had abit of cotton attached:o(

c yeh

jude :o)

PS.......BC have you got a nyjer feeder for the goldfinches.
Bellblair....you'd think you'd have had loads of snow by now, have'nt seen fieldfare for yrs.