Garden visitors – February 2019

"The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm
and hide his head under his wing, poor thing" 

traditional nursery rhyme

In this month’s blog I want to continue looking more closely at the bird visitors to my Dorset garden. February brought snow, many daily visitors including ‘Billy’ and ‘Rose’ and the Long tailed tits (see January’s blog). This month we’ll take a look at the Dunnock, a female Blackcap and a male Bullfinch. Also we’ll catch up on the bathing antics of the Robin and Blue tit.

Snow

The end of January brought yellow and amber weather warnings. The snow arrived on Friday, 1st February. News feeds were full of stories of disruption and shut down of services.

The garden was more active, it seemed to me, than usual and was transformed for a day or two into a beautiful white, winter backdrop.

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Then the snow disappeared as quickly as it arrived and signs of a new season began to appear.

As a child I would visit my grandparents home, Hill Cottage, just north of Hereford. We would explore the woods behind the cottage and I remember being captivated by clumps of primroses and seas of bluebells. It’s too early for bluebells, but the snowdrops and primroses have arrived. The ground still has the signs of death, the brown, dead leaves from the deciduous trees, But the new season and new life is there too, and is beginning to push through.

The quintessential LBJ – the Dunnock

The Dunnock is also known as the hedge sparrow, but it is not actually a sparrow. It’s part of the same family as the european Robin and Wren. It is the quintessential LBJ (little brown job).

The Dunnock blends into the background and is easily overlooked, e.g. they didn’t make it into Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to British Birds. However in my quest to look more closely at the birds that visit my garden, I cannot ignore this regular.

My RSPB Handbook of British Birds tells me that a Dunnock ‘is an unusual visitor to a raised bird table, and more likely to feed underneath.’

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My Dunnocks can’t read and tend to prefer the more ‘unusual’ habit of taking food from the raised bird table and seed feeder.

This close up of the Dunnock reveals some of the intricate, detailed beauty of this common, unremarkable bird. There are some 2.5 million in the UK and its song particularly at this time of the year rivals that of its cousin, the european Robin.

Ms Blackcap takes to the stage

At last! This month, the Female Blackcap turned up for a photo shoot. She’s been a regular visitor, but up to now has been quite shy. This time she was in no hurry to move on. There has been no sign of a male, which does actually have a blackcap, but I’ll keep looking.

I’ve noticed that Ms Blackcap is actually a regular visitor to the bird table, but she tends to be very discreet about it. Her colouring means that she falls into the LBJ category. I may have seen her without realising what I was actually looking at.

Bullfinch – a splash of colour

This finch most definitely is not an LBJ! His colour is striking for a British bird and cannot be confused with any other bird.

Strictly speaking he didn’t visit my garden, rather he sat in my neighbour’s tree long enough for me to get a couple of pictures, which I’ve then cropped. There are only 220,000 pairs in the UK and the population is declining. The Bullfinch is not a regular visitor – I have only seen him once or twice. He definitely falls into the “Ooh, look!” category for me.

Bath times

The bird bath continues to attract visitors. The day after the snow, the water was totally frozen, so I took out a jug of warm water and poured it in. Later that day I was gratified to see it in use. These two are regulars, but I have also caught ‘Billy’ the blackbird using it surreptitiously.