A great morning’s birdwatching today – a large number of sparrows, young and adults, blackbirds a-plenty, chaffinches, greenfinches, bickering goldfinches, great tits, blue tits, a dunnock – the only thing missing was a robin and Walter the pigeon. Yes, these were all in my garden whilst I had my breakfast – I was so interested in the behaviour of the different birds, particularly the three young goldfinches, that I was nearly late for work (never mind).
One of the goldfinches was quite shy and was easily pushed out of the way, another sat inside the ground feeder quietly eating away at the sunflower hearts in there, ignoring the raucous sparrows, and the third, is the most aggressive of the lot, chased away nearly all the other birds that tried to evict him from the feeder. Most that is, apart from a male bullfinch, one of the highlights of the morning, looking beautiful against a rare blue sky, one of the prettiest birds, and one that hasn’t visited the garden for a couple of years.
Just in case anyone is wondering why I am constantly going on about the birds, firstly they really bring the garden to life, and, secondly, it stops me getting morose about all of the slug damage going down (they are picking on my beans and salad crops now that they have finished off the courgette, cosmos and sunflowers).