Hobbies and Crafts

I've now seen exactly where the nest is and it is on the arm supporting a small satellite dish left by the previous occupants of the house and unused by us. But we now think the doves are dismantling it as the path is again covered in little bits of twig etc. and the nest now has plenty of holes appearing. I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Hopefully they are moving house Vera :-D.I remember some years ago now(I think I may have already said this) but we had a pair of Collared Doves nesting on top of the Security light at the back of our house just along from my bedroom.They had 2 chicks and we waited and watched them grow(had to lean out of the window to see ) and then finally saw them take their first wobbly flight :-D..They were proper little ugly things with these massive beaks lol.It was quite scary seeing them tottering at the edge of the nest.I even put an old sun lounger cushion underneath in case they fell.
OH thought once again I was a right old daft bat :-S

Hello Girls,
How are you all , much going on in your garden?

Here is a more detailed bird recipe of mine, they go mad over it.
4kg Porridge Oats,cost £3.40, 3kg Kibbled Peanuts,cost £3.99, 2kg Sunflower Hearts,cost £4.00,1kg Currants, cost £3.80 and four large packs of Lard.

This quantity will make 8 x 5 litre water containers, I will send a photo to Ann's blog to show you what I mean.
Kandi~~ did you make any of this mix, I think you said you were going to give it a try.

We have a pair of Red-Starts, several Chiff-Chaffs, Siskins, Linett's and I think I mentioned the Black-Caps in a earlier post.
BlackBirds and Thrushes are busy building also got a wren tarting up the nest she nicked from the Swallows last year in the front porch.
Owls are making a right racket during the night and early hours.
Badgers yet again are causing havoc digging up bulbs.

That's it folks.
You all take care
Shaun

Shaun ,the Owls here are too a Hooting and Tooting .I was just standing outside the back door listening to them.I just can't work out where exactly they are.

Morning everyone:)

Here's the link to rspb re Garden Birdwatch in January:)

http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/

hope it works:)

jude xx

On the photo blog is a photo and description of how to make Shaun's bird feeder from a plastic bottle.

Interesting link Jude, thanks. No need to wonder where all the starling have gone to. They are here in Yorkshire in our garden and eating everything in sight! No wonder other varieties of birds are few and far between. Not a happy bunny me.

Yes Shaun, I have made up your bird cake recipe several times now and it is so easy and much less expensive than the shop bought ones... so thanks for sharing that.

I have plenty of bird food in the cupboard at the moment but once it starts to run low I shall be trying your recipe Shaun.

Having almost completely demolished their first nest, the collared doves have rebuilt it and there is one sitting on it now looking very smug. It would have been nice if something a bit more exotic had chosen to nest in the garden but an upmarket pigeon has got to be better than nothing.

My male and female sparrow have been back together this morning. Mr Sparrow flits between the seeds and the fat balls and Mrs follows him wherever he goes

:-D

I wish I had had a video camera earlier.There was a Red Kite flying so low over the field at the front .It is the horses field.One of the horses just stood and had its head raised watching the bird fly over it.I could see the head moving around following the bird.It was quite lovely to watch :-D
I must wash my window tomorrow...it is covered in Squirrel foot marks :-S :-S

That sounds like an amazing sight Jane.

A bright sunny morning here after a foggy start to the morning. Nothing much has changed we just have the starlings fighting over who will land on the window feeder and it's just bread they are fighting for now.

Lesley I have taken your advice and stopped putting food on the ground tray so the lock of starlings that came here morning and afternoon has ceased.

I am continuing to treat my Mr and Mrs Blackbird and thrush with suet pellets and water. They pop in and out of the shrubbery from time to time.
Only the Magpies, collard doves and pigeons seem to be flying around the road today, nothing else though.

This is more like it.I have all my doors and windows open :-D.The birds are singing ,OH digging down the garden,and me ? well I think it is going to be weeding the gravel out the front :-S :-S
It will be lunch on the patio for sure today :-D :-D

Good Morning Everyone :-)
Spring as Spung this morning, lovely blue skies in Radnorshire after having a very misty start to the day.

Birds singing there little hearts out.

Kandi, glad the food mix as encouraged your birds, also another good idea is to peel a apple and put it in a net that the peanuts come in.
I also have a net stuffed full of sheep wool which was collected from barbed-wire in the field. It' so funny to see the tits tugging at the wool.

That's it folks.
you all have a lovely day.

Shaun

Today MOG and I tidied our family graves, in the churchyard of MOG's family we lost count of how many jay's we saw, we all know what that means :-(

kandj I am so pleased your greedy starlings have left your garden :-D

I hope you have been able to remove the tree rat sorry squirrels marks from your window Jane :-D

Shaun I have to admit I have never seen a redstart, I think that's another bird that doesn't like Essex :-S

Posh pigeons...I love that saying Vera :-D

Thanks for putting the new photographs on your blog Ann :-)

This is the result of one bird watch in our village (not mine) 10 goldfinches, 2 robins,2 dunnocks, 2 collared doves, 1 wood pigeon, 2 great tits, 2 coal tits, 4 blue tits,6 blackbirds, 6 chaffinches,1 song thrush, 1 great spotted wood pecker and 12 greenfinches.

The lady that wrote this in our village magazine also said that the large number of greenfinches were attracted by the black sunflower seeds she puts in her feeder-definitely their favourite food. The added bonus of black sunflower seeds is that they are one of the cheapest bird food available but they do make rather a mess under the bird table and if not cleared away can produce several unwanted seedlings later in the year.

Lesley x

Happy Mothers day everyone :-D
My son is cooking !!!!! I keep getting shoved out of the kitchen lol but I need to keep an eye on things :-D.It is a nice big roast.
Daughter is sat on the settee recovering from a Glamping Hen do last night.She is then back off to London on the 4 o'clock train.

Yes the feet marks have come off fine Lesley.They were like streaks as it must have slid down to get to the ground.

I don't think I have heard of the meaning of seeing Jays.Does it mean if you just see them in a Churchyard?
The feeder seems very quiet today.In fact there don't seem to many birds about at all at the moment.

The sun is desperately trying to break through.I think it might just about get there :-D

I hope all the Mothers have enjoyed this special Mothers Day as I have today?
Jane, I hope your son cooked you a delicious dinner (you're sure to have taught him well) Is "Glamping" a glamorous form of camping, what did your daughter and her friends sleep in?

Lesley, I hope baby Millie was taught to write a special card for Mummy this year?
I can't recall the meaning of seeing Jays...... at first I thought of the rhyme one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girls and four for a boy but I think that relates to magpies
and not to Jays?

Shaun I do chop up apples and pears that have gone past their best and the birds love them but I have never thought to put a peeled apple into a net. Would the birds not harm their feet/claws if they got caught in a net?

I did appreciate having the extra hour of daylight this evening.... a real tonic I think.

Sorry, all I meant about seeing the jays was that they were probably there eating the birds eggs and nestlings :-(

kandj M has very grown writing for someone so young ;-)

Lesley x

Aww, bless baby M...... a very special gift indeed.

It looks Spring like but I have felt really chilled just pegging the washing out on the clothes line earlier on. Not very many birds around here at all today.

Fairly mild today but very overcast and there have been one or two short showers. Apart from the pigeons and the collared doves who seem to have moved in with us, I have hardly seen any birds today. There has been a bluetit on the suet cake and the male sparrow on the seeds. At least he seems happy with the cheaper ones I bought in the market; he was backwards and forwards to the feeder for quite a while.

I also wondered about putting an apple into a net as Shaun suggested. The feeder we bought had hooks for fat balls in nets but, as the RSPB seemed to be against that, we took them down and bought a different kind of container for the fat balls.

In our last house we had a large and very old apple tree. I used to leave a lot of windfalls down on the ground and the birds loved them, particularly the blackbirds, and occasionally field fares.

It still seems very quiet bird wise again today.Still plenty on the feeder but they don't appear to be queuing up to take turns like usual lol
The Blackbirds have been busy on the lawn though.OH raked a load of moss out of it yesterday so I'm guessing there must be some goodies there :-D

Well little Baby M is a clever girl Leslie .Very advanced for her age :-D :-D.How old is she now? 4/5 months?.Maybe not even that .I can't remember when she surprised everyone.

Good morning everyone.

Rainy and overcast this morning and cold as well. Starlings not fussed with the bread in the window feeder and so almost no takers or any birds interested, boo hoo.

Not sure if this is working for us. The window feeder has been in place since 19 December and it seemed to take forever before the solitary young blackbird appeared regularly. We were delighted and then the Starlings took over both the window feeder and the ground feeder.
On Lesley's advice I stopped using the ground feeder and then Idecided to put only bread in the window feeder to discourage the very greedy starlings who were emptying the suet pellets and then the fat birdseed cake (Shaun's recipe) at an alarming rate. They are noisy, aggressive, greedy birds and not my favourites at all.