For days we were watching the wildlife through the windows of our flat before one day we decided to take our cameras and spend some time photographic visitors of our garden. We transformed our shed to a hide, covered a garden fence with grass for a better background and of course filled feeders with sunflower seeds, nuts, suet and dry worms. With a cup of tea and comfy cushions on a bench we were ready for some action.
During the first couple of days starlings were the most frequent guests. Their numbers have fallen drastically over the last years and it was nice to see them in our garden.
Starlings were a little bit noisy and greedy, they used to descend on food in large numbers and eat most of it leaving not a lot for the other birds. But at the same time they gave us a wonderful performance and provided much entertainment. It was fun to watch how juveniles chase after the parents asking for food or fight each other over a bigger and tastier piece.
We made additional feeders for robins, goldfinches, dunnocks, house sparrows, blue tits and great tits a bit further from the main feeding station which helped them to get used to the noise and a bit agresive behaviour of their neighbours. As most of smaller birds had juveniles to feed at that time, the presents of fighting starlings didn't bother them too much.
Goldfinch in our garden
Dunnock in our garden
Robin in our garden
Blue tit feeding a juvenile
The feeding station for birds was not only visited by birds. Of course grey squirrels gave us a visit every day.
It was fun to watch how they try to reach nuts or sunflowers seeds from the bird feeders and without a doubt most of the time they were successful.
One of the very important guests of our garden turned up a little bit later that day. We almost held our breath and made really slow movements not to scare it. Luckily our presents didn't bother juvenile great spotted woodpecher too much and we were very pleased that it didn’t react to a clicking noise of the camera and wasn't shy to give us a wonderful performance.
Most of the times we knew when the great spotted woodpecker was coming as it likes to announce its presence by a loud call. Before we started photographing the visitors of our garden, a male woodpecker was a frequent visitor as it had juveniles to feed. It used to come to the feeders, grab a piece of suet and carry it to the juveniles which calmly were waiting in the old pine tree. As the small ones were getting older they started to explore the area themselves and of course started to visit the feeders.
While spending more time in the garden or scanning it through the windows we noticed that a fox likes to give us a visit. Most of the time it used to turn up in evenings, but several times we witnessed its presence in the morning or during the day.
In couple of month it even brought two cubs for us to see. One of them is still enjoying our garden and gives us a visit every evening.
Couple of weeks ago we were very surprised when we saw a sparrowhawk on the fence of our garden. We haven’t seen it since, but we are sure it scans the feeders from time to time. Hopefully one day we gonna manage to take a picture of it...
More news ... we had a fieldfare visiting our garden this winter. Apples have done a trick. He stayed for three days but departed as soon as snow melted. Unfortunately we went to our shed/hide on the day when snow started to melt; we waited all day and didn’t get a chance to photograph our winter garden visitor. At least it's an easier life for couple of blackbirds now as the fieldfare was a bit aggressive and didn't let them near apples.