A birdy morning!

We spent the morning at my parents house, sat out in the garden enjoying the sunshine and watching all their back garden birds. They always have a lot of birds and today was no exception, with nests and baby birds everywhere.

We went early to try and see Kenny, the male red kite, working on the nest. He tends to build until about 11am, before they both head off somewhere for the day, returning for their tea in the afternoon. Unfortunately they took one look at my camera and disappeared, as usual! Although we did see him flying around with a stick in his beak later in the morning. Their nest is really taking shape now and he's started lining it with tissues again, so he must be getting near to completing it. Also, the knicker elastic that fell out of the old nest has disappeared from the lawn, so we think he must have taken it back up to the new nest!

There were lots of other kites around and some of them were courting by chasing each other around in the sky.

The silly sparrows lost their nest from the basement of the old kites nest when it was blown out of the tree in the gales. We all thought they would build somewhere more 'traditional', but it appears they've just waited for Kenny to build a new nest and moved straight back in!

The sparrows moved straight back into the basement

Simon sits and sings a lot - you can see a piece of tissue just behind him that
must have been dropped just outside of the kites nest

A family of robins had recently fledged and were being fed by the parents. Mum got very upset when a cat walked through the next door garden and called the alarm!

Eventually the cat left and she calmed down, so they could get down to working on a second brood!

One of the baby blackbirds left the nest and has been sat in a flowerbed for the last three days. Dad has been busy looking after him, while the other babies have stayed put in the nest.

Mrs Blackbird has started building a new nest

A pair of jackdaws were nest building in the top of the old Christmas tree. We watched them collecting twigs and flying back to the tree all morning.

 

A flock of large birds, with long beaks and big wingspans, flew overhead in a rough 'V' formation. Not really sure what they are, but they look a little bit like cormorants. Not sure where they're off to, but they all appear to be going somewhere together!

There were lots of other birds around the garden, including blue tits, lovey doves, woodpigeons, chaffinches and dunnocks. They were all loving a bit of sunshine!

Then we got home and there was a goldcrest in the silver birch in our garden. Horrible photos I'm afraid, but they're really tiny and they were high up a tree!