Today, from my window here at work, I have seen in the garden two woodpeckers, 6 or 7 blue tits, 3 or 4 chaffinches, loads of starlings and now, an almost jet black pheasant.... beautiful. Oh, and a pigeon.

Earlier in the year we had two partridges pecking around the garden and, on an almost daily basis, two peacocks would give me a heart-attack when I spooked them coming into work in the mornings. Last year, they had chicks, apparently.

And to those of you who thought I meant different birds, and only came in because of the thread subject... shame on you!

Shouldn't this be in the Lads' forum?

Girls can admire birds too.

I spotted 8 different types of bird on or near my bird feeder in about 5 minutes the other day. Which was nice - but I am easily pleased....

betcha you didn't have a woodpecker?

No, but have seen them in the garden at work (the green ones)

saw 2 great tits this morning and thought a bird in the hand is better than 2 in the bush until her woke up and slapped me

Lovely little Robin was sitting by our filled in pond at the weekend. Lovely little thing he was. He got scared off by our neigbours fluffy feather duster of a cat which is a horrible thing.

I'm looking forward to seeing a bit more of my red breasted friend as Christmas card season approaches.

i've got one that feeds on our nut feeder

Your days in work must just fly by

No pun intended.

Kookaburra's regularly laugh themselves stupid in the tree in my backyard.

Here's a short 12 second vid of a kookaburra laughing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0ZbykXl ... kookaburra

In the absence of anything else to do at work at the moment , I need these distractions.

A little Robin joined the list of different birds here too, Shrews. My favourite bird alongside the little Jenny Wren, both of which are just about the only two species of birds I see at home in my very bird-unfriendly new housing estate - and that tends to be only on Christmas Day!

I am trying to persuade by boss to put out bird feeders this winter, but he reckons it will attract rats.

And he's right, we get rats (huge ones sometimes) hanging off the feeders in the garden.

But once you can get around the fact they're rats, they are amazing creatures. They are as nimble as squirrels and clever as anything.

Best bird we get regularly in our garden is the Nuthatch. It has a set routine and takes no prisoners when there's seed to be had. They just arrow themselves at the other birds, who basically have to clear out of the way or get knocked into the bushes. Great entertainment.

Oh right, not good news about the rats then. The birds are currently going mad on grapes, so once they are finished, the birds will be gone.

Biggest bully in the garden? I reckon it is the Starling, although I haven't seen a Nuthatch.... yet.

The young starlings can get on my feeders but the older ones don't seem to be nimble enough

Not sure how rats could get on my feeders - could they climb a slim pole?

Any spillage is mopped up by collared doves and pigeons so no worries of food on the ground attracting them.

Which of course, by many, are regarded as flying rats anyway!

Rats are just like squirrels, they can do the whole 'Mission Impossible' thing, and they have this amazing trick they do if you collar them. They just freeze, so even if you are inches away from them, they don't move. You have to actually see them to know they are there and if they are trapped, they leap amazing distances.

A chap I met once described how, if caught in a barn they leap about to avoid any possible gun shots, even if they're not actually being shot at. Spooky.

Biggest bully on my feeders has to be the neighbours ginger cat! He regularly climbs and sits in the ornamental cherry that my feeders hang on - birds are in no danger though as he needs all his wits to hang on to what is actually a very small tree!! Almost flies home as soon as I pick up the hose pipe as well....

Birdwise, top of the tree (sic) is the lesser spotted woodpecker - knocks all else off the nut feeders (including the nuthatches!), and keeps them off for ages while he has his fill.

Robin is also my favourite - even though he sits on the back of a chair on my patio and not only sings his head off all day and well into the evening, he leaves his mark all over it!!

Murf - a word of warning.... Is your feeder of the type that divides at the top to give more than one hanging position? If so, beware of birds getting their feet trapped in the space where the pole splits. This happened to my in-laws recently, but luckily they managed to free the goldfinch in time. They have now wedged a small piece of wood in the top so it can't happen again.

Jonathan - don't listen to your manager.... Rats as well as birds need feeding. As long as your feeder is out in the open, you're unlikely to get them anyway as they are fairly timid creatures. Fill the feeders in the morning with just enough to last the birds that day - that way there will be nothing much to attract them anyway. Like murf says, there are usually enough birds to clear up what falls on the floor.

Ta, I'll have to check if that is possible.

Haven't got it up at the moment but I've got a great perspex tray one that fits to my kitchen window so you can see them up close. You can get cheap ones but mine (Damn Yankees?) is adjustable so you can stop the bigger birds like starlings getting on it. Remember hanging some fat balls off it at my old house and watching a family of blue tits one summer. 5 fledglings and could see them get bigger each day.

Careful murf... we will have those "shocking" gay adverts again! I have seen those feeders that go on the windows. I would imagine the birds would really need to trust their surroundings to use them - I can't even get them in a tree at home

I'm quite fortunate, my feeders are on the side of my house that borders an open field. Also the border is formed by various shrubs, bushes etc that the birds feel safe in.

Bordering open land also means House Martins are happy to nest in my eaves

No offence intended, murf, but the best bird feeder we have up in Lewis is sheep.

I've yet to witness it myself, but every summer the eagles lift a few lambs and fly off to their young with them - a sight I'd love to see!

I missed one event by a day a few years back, when staying at a remote, near-derelict cottage on the Harris border.
Two chaps were in a bothy in Harris, across the sea loch, and told me the following:

Imagine two rivers that meet at a right angle at precisely the high tide mark, the R. Voshmid dividing Lewis from Harris, the R. Housay on the Harris side, with a small dwelling by its banks.
As they stood outside their house they could clearly see a golden eagle sat on a stone wall about 80 yards away on the Lewis side. It was staring intently at a ewe with two lambs in a field about twenty yards ahead of it.

The ewe knew there was danger and stared intently back at the bird, ready to defend its young if needs be ..... but sheep tend to lack concentration and its train of thought ran something like this:
"Eagle! Eagle! Eagle! Eagle! Grass. Eagle! Eagle! Eagle! Grass! Mmmm! Grass!"

They said that the second it dipped its head to the turf the eagle swooped from the wall and, in a second, seized a lamb.
It gained height, then turned, banked, and crossed both rivers, alighting briefly, in the heather on the Harris side of the River Voshmid, then took off again and, lambless, returned to the wall to take the second lamb! With just the one young 'un to keep her eye on, though, the ewe was in a better position to guard her offspring and it was unsuccessful in its second attempt, flying off empty clawed.

One of the guys, David, waded across the Housay, interested to see what state the poor first lamb was in. To his amazement, he found it sat quite happily in the heather, unharmed except for some small dots of blood on its fleece where the eagle's tallons had torn the skin. He picked it up, crossed the Voshmid and returned it to its mother.

The poor old eagle, then, got nothing for its trouble and had to search elsewhere for supper. But why would it want two lambs, not just one?

Well, the guys reckoned that she would have had fledgelings in an eyrie up in the mountains and intended to bring them live young lambs to teach them how to kill which, I reckon, is as pausible a reason as any.


All this has reminded me of a story I heard a while back on the radio .....

When the Crystal Palace was first built in London it enclosed several enormous old trees in Hyde Park - and with them, a host of small birds became imprisoned.
Queen Victoria was due to perform the Grand Opening but the lackies were extrememly worried that Her Majesty would get crapped on by all the little brown birds ..... but what to do?

They couldn't shoot them, because of the glass roof .... Poisoning was impractical ..... Cats, traps & nets too unreliable ...... The matter was desperate!

Eventually, it came to the attention of the Duke of Wellington, now an elderly man but still sharp as a tack. His answer ......?

Sparrowhawks!

You always come up with some superb stories, Flyman! Not something I have ever heard - the taking of lambs... incredible! I saw a blackbird take a snail in my garden once - doesn't quite compare, does it!

Edit: When I say stories, I don't mean you tell stories, but have great recollection of actual events!

Cheers, J, - aye, I don't make 'em up - I've not got the imagination!

But, tbh, as an Englishman abroad, I really do miss the chorus of song birds that I bet many take for granted down south. We have a few thrushes and blackbirds, chaffinches, wrens and robins - wonderful creatures - but not enough to get that beautiful chorus of birdsong that summer days in suburbia can provide.

And one has to take scale into account! Watching a blackbird battling with a well entrenched lob worm is a great thing to behold.

I've noticed recently that the hooded crows and ravens have taken to picking up shellfish in the small-boats' harbour near me, flying to about twenty feet high, then droppping the mussel/winkle onto the rocks below to smash the shell. What eyesight they must have to spot which way the bit with the meat in it bounces!
Nature, eh? Bloody marvellous!

Another new bird species this morning. Not quite sure which is was though, a Song Thrush or a Mistle Thrush. From what I have read, the Song Thrush is pretty rare, so that makes me think it was probably the Mistle Thrust. But looking at the piccies, I reckon it was a Song Thrush! Either way... I have got thrush!

Song thrush probably, was it on the ground?

No, it was eating from a berry bush we have here, and landed on the trellis. It was quite large, and it says the Song Thrush is larger than the Mistle Thrush.

Nope:

"Smaller and warmer toned than Mistle Thrush. Loud clear song characterised by repetition of short phrases.Sexes similar."

http://www.birdsofbritain.co.uk/bird-gu ... thrush.asp

Sorry, yes, I have that the wrong way around.

Apparently, there was a green woodpecker messing about amongst the leaves under the apple tress for about 15 minutes yesterday. Mrs Sp4 watched it probably hunting ants. I've never actually seen them on the ground though that's what they do.

I've seen them at work (as in the office's garden). Definitely pecking away at something in the ground. Googling told me they like ants.

I had a goldfinch on my feeders at the weekend. First one I've seen in ages for some reason. Haven't had many finches at all this year