My Garden BIrds

My Garden Birds

I have lived in my present house for almost 27 years, in Bristol. It is a Victorian terraced house where, like so many in my area, form an enclosed area within the back gardens of the surrounding houses. There are many of these ‘garden squares’ –[ they aren’t square] in my area and it makes for a pleasant and popular place for people to live in Bristol.

When I first came here, I was amazed by the lack of birds in the area. I knew I had magpies around when my very aggressive cat [ now dead for some years] actually took a young magpie from the roof. For many day afterwards a large army of magpies settled around the neighbouring roofs and fences and complained at us any time I or my cat appeared in the garden – reminiscent of Hitchcock’s – The Birds.

Since I have retired and have now got so much more time to look around me and enjoy nature [on my allotment I had so many birds whose company made my working days there joyful]. I decided to set up a good quality bird feeding station at the end of my garden. My current cats are really too old to be bothered to chase after birds although, I couldn’t guarantee that some of the other neighbourhood cats wouldn’t enjoy the hunt.

After several weeks, I emailed my sister-in-law – who is a keen bird watcher – and complained that I had seen no birds. She assured me that I had to be patient – did I have an option?

Gradually, the birds started to arrive in the first winter. Many species I had never seen before. Of course, blackbirds; pigeons and those very pretty collared doves; magpies; wrens, great-tits and bluetits; a  little brown bird with a black head which I eventually identified as a blackcap; a robin – at last!; dunnocks and during a particularly cold winter I had flocks of redwings and fieldfares.

Since my early days at this I have realised that it is important to have other feeding stations that the pigeons can’t get to as they will demolish all the food really quickly and will discourage all the smaller birds. It seems that magpies and now starlings can get to almost anything - I might look at a ‘squirrel free’ feeder for the future which might keep those larger birds out. From my computer position in my dining room, I have a clear view of two of these feeders. Over the last couple of years I have identified 22 different species of bird to have visited my garden.

Christmas 2013, my daughters bought me a bird box with an integrated camera as a present. It took me some time to position this box and then to drill through my house walls for the cables to attach to my computer – it was then too late for birds to even think of this as a possible home. I did make one big mistake – I thought that if I put lots of chopped-up wool into the box it would help them to create a nest – BIG MISTAKE. The birds will not come near it if they think some other creature is in residence.

Over winter I cleared it out and was delighted in March when a pair of bluetits started to build a nest. They came up on my screen at 3 times larger than life and it was so exciting to see them create this nest from moss and MY garden thyme. This was so magical.

I had to go away for some time and my computer was being upgraded to Windows 7. I had not been on-line for at least a couple of weeks. When I returned, the bluetits had vanished. Well, not completely, they are still around my garden feeders.

Does anyone know if this is common practice among garden birds – perhaps to build more than one nest. I can’t pretend that I wasn’t disappointed. However, a couple of days ago a large bumble moved in. She spent some time there rummaging among the nesting materials – perhaps an hour or more. I am now hoping that for this year I will have a bumble bee nest to watch over, then start again with the birds next spring.

I would be really grateful for any advice on ensuring my birds stay in the nest or on what I might be doing wrong.

One of the big plus-sides to having all these birds in my garden now is that I have to hunt to find a couple of aphids – yippee! Perhaps the birds will also clear out the saw-fly larvae on my rose bushes in a couple of months.