It’s a warm, sunny day and I’m a furlough worker, so what better way to spend some time than birding in the backyard at home. If you’re following live – as per the reference in the video just uploaded to YouTube – welcome.
12.00 noon. Great start, as I heard a chiffchaff calling from a tree two gardens away. Taking a closer look with the binoculars, there were a pair of birds. Lived here since the 1980s and the first I’ve seen. Thrilled with that.
12.10 p.m. Robin, blackbird and wood pigeon all seen so far.
12.15 p.m. Five house sparrow (3m, 2f) in a bush in a neighbouring garden. It’s a regular spot for the species.
12.20 p.m. A peacock butterfly landed briefly on blossom just a couple of metres from where I’m sitting. Birds, butterflies, fungi, wild flowers, I love them all. It’s all part of the big great outdoors package.
12.25 p.m. A couple of hundred metres away, a carrion crow in flight.
12.30 p.m. I heard it calling first and it took me a couple of minutes to find it. There’s a blue tit in the silver birch tree. I found the tree in my early 20s uprooted and dumped to die. I took it home, planted it and it’s now a mature specimen.
12.35 p.m. Another butterfly, this time a small tortoiseshell passing through the garden in gentle flight, with no care in the world.
12.50 p.m. Although my ground view is quite limited, I have plenty of sky to observe. It’s very quiet though, a wood pigeon is just the second bird to be seen.
12.55 p.m. Two blue tit in the silver birch tree. Both feeding on the early buds.
1.00 p.m. Seven house sparrow in the bush. I can also hear noisy birds some distance away. Thought I briefly heard a chiffchaff in song but can’t be sure. Enjoyed my hour in the garden though, will definitely do this again.
Hello Stewart,
I have recently followed you You Tube channel as I’m interested in all wildlife, and have always been fascinated by freshwater life (although only been angling twice on a canal in Tipton and the Staffs and Worcs at Wall Heath – in the early 80s). I was a veteran pond dipper by the age of 9 as I had a pond in the garden full of amphibians and fish. My parents still live in the house I grew up in, in Tipton (after a short while I realised you are at a Church there). They have a small pond, and I recently purchased some sticklebacks for it off Ebay (i travelled to Gloucester to get them).
Interested to see you had seen a Goldcrest. We have one where I know live (in Dorridge). There’s a huge Spruce in the garden next to ours and it comes onto the feeders ( usually in winter only).
Take care.
Hello, Mark. Thanks for getting in touch, good memories there!
Funnily enough, my next blog entry includes a reference about buying sticklebacks. It’s already been done before I read this, so a coincidence.
Take care yourself.
I too have been doing a lot of twitching recently. Along with the daily usual suspects (which now include buzzard since we’ve just moved further out into the sticks ) , I recently saw my first goldcrest and today’s star was a spotted woodpecker.
One bonus of this furlough malarkey, having the time to chill in the garden and soak up the new surroundings
Nice one, you can’t beat the great outdoors. I’ve been getting to know my garden more than ever and that’s the great thing about birding, you don’t even have to leave the house.