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Garden birds...

Nicki

Moderator
As some of you may know, as well as being a Cavalier lover, I'm very keen on wildlife, particularly birds.

The news, from in and around the garden, is that the following birds fledged successfully:

Wrens, Starlings {in the old chimney!}, Great Tits and Blue Tits, Robins, Siskins and even Grey Wagtail {1st sighting from the garden, an adult with a youngster}

Sadly the Chaffinches didn't make it - there were two babies in the nest. One was out of the nest for some reason lying on the lawn - too young to have fledged, we think it must have fallen - and Peaches found it first. She didn't hurt it, just barked at it and although we rescued it and put it back, it died later in the day. Sadly the other one also died, it was much smaller.

The really great news though is that our {Barn} Swallows have fledged 4 youngsters...they left the nest Saturday afternoon.

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One of my favourite species :-[, we have been watching their progress since the adults first arrived.
 
Oh Nicki, they are so sweet :D We've got HUGE conifers at the back of our garden. Hubby keeps them trimmed but basically the house and garden were both totally neglected for 15 years so you can sort of imagine the size they were when we moved in two years ago!

If we ever got them cut down we would gain about another 12 foot depth of garden all along the back (yes, really!!!!) we quite like them though as not only does it give us privacy but we also have loads of birds nesting in them. We also have bats in them too which I think is wonderful. So far this year we've only found one dead pigeon (or at least, Maxx found it and was standing over it crying and gently pawing it and nuzzling it) and one very young chick that only had down (probably a few days old).

Once they had all fledged, hubby got up to do his trimming business and found a perfect tits nest with broken eggs still in there. It is now on the show and tell table at my friends little boys school & apparently the kids were totally fascinated :D

Nature is such a fantastic thing :D
 
Thanks Cathy :)

Donna, it was lovely to hear about your hedge - I know how much space they can take up, but it's wonderful that the wildlife have moved in, despite it not being a native species.

Sad about the pigeons - are they actually pigeons or Collared Doves - grey but with a dark neck ring? They do have the most awful nests, 1/2 dozen twigs thrown together, and you wonder how the babies ever fledge.

Bless Maxx, he sounds such a sweetie.

Great news about the bats, they are such wonderful creatures and great for keeping the insects down!
 
We've got both Nicki, collared and un-collared and the noise and mess is appalling. They also eat all the food before letting the other little birds get any. My youngest said he was going to put a sleeping draught in the first lot of food to make them sleep and then the others would get a chance LOL.
 
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