Last year I broke the record for my 'Garden Year List' by one species, coming in with a fairly healthy 32 different species setting foot in my garden (fly-overs don't count). This might not be too spectacular to those of you who live in the countryside, but for a suburban garden I don't think it's too shabby a number. By the end of March last year I'd seen 24 of these.
This year, by the end of March, I've already seen 32 different species. OK, so the scope for picking up extra species for the garden year list is fairly small, but, on past records, it would not be unusual to pick up Carrion Crow, Willow Warbler and Willow Tit - and March brought two garden 'year ticks' and a garden 'lifer'! Who knows what else the year might bring - we're only a quarter of the way through it!
The star performers in March were the Siskins, Redpolls, and Bramblings.
The Siskins have been real stars, peaking at 10 birds at one sitting on 19th March. Numbers are dwindling a bit now, but they're still showing on a daily basis. These are some images from the last few days. This might well be my last opportunity this year to post images of Siskin, so please excuse me if I indulge myself!
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| Siskin (male) - our garden |
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| Siskin (female) - our garden |
Sometimes photography goes wrong and things don't turn out quite as we had hoped for. This next image was taken in extremely contrasty conditions, but I quite like the atmosphere of the shot.
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| Siskin (female) - our garden |
This next one went hopelessly wrong but, for some reason, I love the patterns of the motion!
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| Siskin (male) - our garden |
That's it for Siskins - I promise!
The Redpolls are also still with us on a daily basis but, again, their numbers are thinning out a little now. We peaked at 8 birds on 20th February, but we still had five visiting on 1st April. I've taken very few photos of them lately as they now favour the far end of the garden so, unless I happen to be in my conservatory with my camera at the time, they're too far away. I still haven't sussed out which ones without pink on the breast are females, males in non-breeding plumage, or just immature birds. I'm sure I'd never spot a Common/Arctic Redpoll!
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| Lesser Redpoll (female/non-breeding male/immature?) - our garden |
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| Lesser Redpoll (male) - our garden |
Bramblings had been seen on an almost daily basis, and peaked at 3 birds on 2nd March, but the last bird seen was a single male on 23rd March.
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| Brambling (female) - our garden |
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| Brambling (male) - our garden |
Reed Bunting, although not a rare bird, is a rare visitor to our garden. In March we had visits from female and male birds.
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| Reed Bunting (female) - our garden |
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| Reed Bunting (male) - our garden |
Just scraping in on 29th March, a 'year tick', and only seen once before in the garden in the last four years, was this Goldcrest. Sorry, but I didn't manage an image on a natural branch - I'm not keen on photos of birds on feeders, but this is here as 'one for the record'
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| Goldcrest - our garden |
The 'garden lifer', arriving on 23rd March (in the snow), was a Rook. It's an absolutely lousy image, but any sort of an image of a garden lifer is better than none in my book!
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| Rook - our garden |
Nuthatches aren't seen very often in our garden, so any appearance is worth an attempt at an image. This one visited on 12th March.
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| Nuthatch - our garden |
Greenfinch used to be one of the most common birds in our garden. Then the UK population fell victim to a parasite, and the population plummeted. They seem to be making a bit of a comeback now, but they still cause excitement if we see one in the garden. These two were taken on 30th March.
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| Greenfinch (male) - our garden |
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| Greenfinch (female) - our garden |
There are, of course, plenty of 'everyday birds' in our garden, but I'll still show some of these, primarily for my overseas readers, but I hope they'll also act as reminders of people more familiar with them, as to just how special some of these birds are.
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| Collared Dove - our garden |
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| Blue Tit - our garden |
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| Starling - our garden |
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| Dunnock - our garden |
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| Goldfinch - our garden |
Finally: ......We are still getting visits from a Sparrowhawk - or, more accurately, at least two male Sparrowhawks. I can be certain of this because one of them is the bird with the aberrant circular white patches on the wing feathers that featured in an earlier post. Until recently I'd never seen one catch anything, but I'm pretty sure last week one managed to grab a Blue Tit and make off with it. This is a shot of one lurking in the Rowan tree outside my study window.
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| Sparrowhawk (male) - our garden |
Hopefully I'll be back to owls soon! Thanks for stopping by.
