All of a flutter
February 8th, 2010 by 
gddik
Since I retired last year, I have rediscovered bird-watching and find it very relaxing to just gawp at the little blighters going about their daily business.
I have a bird table and a couple of feeders strategically placed in my garden, and I’m surprised by how many different birds I’ve seen in or around my garden, with zero effort, even from the comfort of my couch. So far, the list includes 26:
- Chaffinch
- Greenfinch
- Bullfinch
- Goldfinch
- Song Thrush
- Blackbird
- Robin
- Wren
- Blue Tit
- Great Tit
- Coal Tit
- Long-Tailed Tit
- Blackcap
- Pied Wagtail
- Jackdaw
- Magpie
- Carrion Crow
- Jay
- Collared Dove
- Wood Pigeon
- Dunnock
- House Sparrow
- Herring Gull
- Common Gull
- Black-Headed Gull
- Greater Spotted Woodpecker
- and if I get off my backside, stroll across the road and look at the river, I can add Dipper, Grey Wagtail, Grey Heron and Mallard Duck. The list grows all the time - I saw the pair of Blackcaps for the first time just this morning, and the Bullfinches last week, but I’m sure I’ll add more as time goes by. Some are more frequent visitors than others of course, but it’s great just to see the common ones flitting about and behaving in their different ways every day. Their feeding habits, and the ways they approach the table and feeders vary enormously.
I had hoped that Cuba and Malta would have been as abundantly stocked with bird-life, but not in the parts we went to, sadly. Our confirmed haul in Malta extended to:
- Spanish Sparrow (by far the most common bird - so numerous that the row they made when roosting at dusk was almost deafening!)
- Sardinian Warbler
- Black Redstart
- Black Necked Grebe
- Common Sandpiper
- Chiffchaff
- Stonechat
- plus a couple of chameleons, which aren’t birds, I know, but lovely to see in the wild all the same…
- and, remarkably for an island, almost no sea-birds and no raptors at all… We could literally have counted the number of gulls (of indeterminate variety) on two hands in the entire week. Very strange.
Cuba didn’t throw up a much wider or more visually appealing variety:
- Cuban Blackbird
- Mockingbird
- Turkey Vulture
- Darter
- Jacana
- Hummingbird (just one!)
- Royal Tern
- Osprey
To be fair, though, the view that we got of several Osprey was spectacular - very close, compared to the views that you get in the UK, from (literally) miles away through powerful telescopes in carefully managed sites. We didn’t go to the right bits of Cuba for bird-watching, but most of what we saw on Malta was at one of the island’s two nature reserves.
So, excellent entertainment, for free, right outside your window. Our bird-life, although much of it is in decline, is every bit as abundant and exotic as other parts of the world. Get yourself a pair of binoculars, put some food out and enjoy the show!
Posted in Stream of Semi-Consciousness | 
February 12th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
When my Ex (the ornithologist) and I visited my parents in Cameroon in 97, he managed to spot 49 different birds in their relatively small garden. I was fairly impressed by that.
I keep meaning to put out a bird table in my garden but never get around to it. I often get buzzards circling high up in the sky during the summer.
February 13th, 2010 at 10:43 am
You really should do it, Zoe. Apart from the free entertainment, the poor little buggers need the food. Bird numbers are dropping dramatically, so every little helps.
Although Buzzards seem to be bucking the trend - they’ve become very common in my neck of the woods in the last few years.
February 14th, 2010 at 9:55 am
My green woodpecker came back yesterday - Tatiana was most impressed!
February 15th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
You have your own green woodpecker? You lucky sod. I’ve only ever seen one once, and that was 300 miles away, in Kent.
Can I have yours, when you’re finished with it, please?