Our Garden Friends

These are my current visitors, some, the family have named as they are regulars:

Scrappy & the woodpigeons

Scrappy named for his tail, it never seems to regrow properly, it does affect his landing ability, meaning he makes an entrance with a bang on the sun lounge roof! We currently have around 4 woodpigeon visitors and they generally do not tolerate each other in the same space and scrappy with chase others off for miles! He did recently bring his friend for breakfast.

Stripe the robin

Stripe named for their white-edged wing only since having the camera and being able to see them close enough to notice their damaged leg and foot, this is a different colour from their normal leg and the foot is curled to the side and claws do not work, this does not seem to affect them other than not being able to use the hanging bird feeders. The other robin in these pictures is I think Stripe's mate, they have been investigating a plant pot on its side in a stack of pots at the side of the shed, yes not the lovely bird boxes my husband made for me!

Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee

For large birds, these are timid magpies, they fly away if I move at all even from behind a window. Never far apart these two visit occasionally chasing the starlings and blackbirds away before grabbing as much as they can carry in their beaks and flying away.

Wren

This little bird, however, is not very afraid of us, even when it got trapped in the sun lounge when I was clearing it out in the summer, It will often come to peek in at me from the step of the sun lounge. Unfortunately, it's small size and the fact it flits around all the time make it very hard to photograph - I keep trying.

Blackbirds

I love the blackbirds and they stand still so nicely for photos. Blackbirds are great to watch as I always think they run a bit like cartoon roadrunners, the females have such lovely patterns and one of our male blackbirds has grey splotches on his tail and side.

Dunnock

This little recognised bird, sometimes confused with the sparrow has lovely markings and is seen regularly hopping around the ground under the feeders.

Blue tits

I think these are my most photographed bird, they have such great colours and their markings can make their faces look so full of character - you will see what I mean on my images page. The first one above has one blue speckled cheek and does a very good angry bird impression.

Great tits

Much harder to photograph as they only stay on the feeder long enough to grab a sunflower heart and then they are up hiding in the trees to eat.

Other regular visitors include:

Starlings

These are recent new visitors to our garden but they now show up every morning for their soaked mealworms.

Sparrows

In the summer our trees and bushes were bursting with sparrows, this has died back a bit since the garden was changed but they are reappearing and love the large feeder outside the window and the acorn feeder. I am currently teaching myself to spot the difference between the two species (house sparrow or tree sparrow) so I can tell with just a glance.

Collared doves

We now have 2 pairs of these lovely birds but they will chase the other pair off if they happen to land in the garden at the same time.

Longtailed tits

These beautiful little birds used to just visit every few days for a bath but they have been recent occasional visitors to the bird feeders.

Feral pigeons

Or the gatecrashers as I call them showed up about a week ago first just the one who visited daily, but he soon brought a friend the pair are now usually waiting for me to fill the ground feeders.

And then there are the squirrels!

We currently have 4 squirrels who are daily visitors, when they are not eating everything in sight, hanging at amazing angles on the bird feeders, they are busy chasing each other in very crazy acrobatic ways (I sware they can fly too!), around the tops of the trees over the shed and up the very large oak tree in the park. I have a love-hate relationship with them, I love to watch them and I feed them in their own special areas of the garden but I do not appreciate them then checking to see if the birds have any food left and destroying the feeders trying to get into the food.

Tbeanz Garden Visitors

Photography by T J Smith

Our Garden Friends

These are my current visitors, some, the family have named as they are regulars: