Nesting time

It feels like spring has sprung in the back garden. The last few days of sunshine have set all the birds minds to nest building. I've seen the sparrows and robins collecting twigs and Brenda, our resident blackbird, has been in and out of one of the bushes by the patio all morning. Seems like mostly moss that she's taking in, so she must be lining her nest already.

One of Brenda's more modest loads - sometime she takes in a pile of moss
almost as big as her body!



There are some long-tailed tits that come to the feeders most days and a small flock of goldfinches visit the silver birch tree every evening. It would be lovely if either of them decided to nest around the garden.

The rooks have been collecting twigs from the silver birch. They seem to prefer to break off their twigs rather than collect any on the ground, snapping fairly large sticks from the tree.

Then for the last few days we've had a female blackcap on the bird feeders. We often have them around all winter, but this is the first time I've seen one so far this year. No sign of a male yet, but I'm sure he'll turn up soon. They're such lovely little birds and despite the name, the female has a pretty chestnut cap (only the male has a black cap!)

 

 

I made some nesting bundles for the birds out of twigs, moss, fluffy seed heads and anything else I could find that they might like. I even got round to putting up the bird box after cleaning it out. It's been sat on the table in the garden waiting to go up, where I've seen a few great tits checking it out, so it's a good job it's up in the tree now. The blue tit have already had a good look inside now it's on the tree, so hopefully somebody will use it this year.

 

Nesting bundle

When I was out walking the dog this morning  I could hear birds singing all around me. They were having a lovely time in the sunshine and I spent some time trying to make out different songs. I'm still pretty useless at identifying birds from their song though (unless it's a robin or a great tit) so I've been given a bird song CD for my birthday and I'm going to try and learn some!

 

It was lovely walking through the woods and I heard at least three different woodpeckers drumming on dead tree trunks nearby, establishing their territories. It's great to hear them, but I wasn't lucky enough to see one today.

 

 

The birds all seem to thing spring has arrived, so lets just hope the weather plays ball and this beautiful sunshine stays for a while.