Fulltime Robin Feeding

The Robin parents are constantly flying in and out of the garage bringing food to their brood now. Here is one of the adults bringing a load of tasty insects to the nest.



You can see the babies wing feathers developing nicely now.

Robin Feathers Growing

What a difference a few days makes! The Robins now have feathers growing over all those pink fleshy bits.

Blue Tits Fledged

As I suspected, the Blue Tits were ready to leave the nest. I saw the last two leaving just as I was setting off for work on Friday, but I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. However on Sunday morning we were lucky to see an entire nest box of blue tits fledge at my In-laws, so I can post a picture of one of theirs just seconds before it left the nest.

The Great Tits Have Gone

I checked on the Great Tits box today, and they were no longer there. They fledged sometime between last Friday and today, but we did not see them go.



The Blue Tits are still in their nest box, but it can't be long before they are ready to fledge too.



The Robins are having a snooze. Check out that funky hair style!

Robins Update

A quick update on the Robins, who are looking really cute. We have had to stop keeping the car in the garage now for fear that the cat will discover the nest and get to it via the car roof.



They certainly look hungry!

Baby Robins Hatch

The robins hatched today. It looks like we have four chicks and one egg which has not hatched properly. They have a lot of 'hair' compared to the tits which were born almost bald.



Meanwhile the blue tits continue to grow fast. I'm a bit concerned about one of them who does not seem to be growing his feathers as fast as the others. You can see him clearly in today's picture here.



The great tits look ready to fledge now.

Full House

What a difference two days makes! Compare this picture with the one taken a couple of days back and the great tit family appears to take up twice as much room! This nest box is going to get awfully crowded at this rate of growth. Their feathers are looking very near fully grown now. I wonder how much longer before they will fledge?

Nestbox Update

The great tits are looking a bit more developed another 4 days on, showing feathers over most of their bodies rather than just the wings.


The blue tits are growing their feathers now too, but not all at the same speed. One chap seems to be a fair bit pinker than his brothers.

Another Nest!

As I was getting into my car in the garage this morning, a bird flew off from right by my ear. I had seen a bird in the garage the other day too, so I looked around to see where it had come from. The only obvious place was this basket, which has been hanging on a nail in the garage since before we bought the house.



On closer inspection I spotted five eggs inside. The mother was a Robin who I saw perching on the fridge freeze near the door into the garden. So now we have to keep the car in the road for a few weeks, because otherwise the cat will easily be able to pounce on the nest from the car roof. With the garage empty the basket is safely hung out of reach, and hopefully the cat will not even notice it.

The Chicks Are Growing Fast

The Great Tit chicks are developing their feathers now. It is difficult to tell, but I think there are eight chicks visible in this picture.



The blue tits are developing fast too. Now six days old they are not quite showing the same level of feather growth as the Great Tits. We don't know exactly which day the Great Tits hatched, but they appear to be a few days ahead of the Blue Tits.

Even More Baby Birds

Two days on and now we have eight baby Blue Tits in the box. It looks like there are three more eggs too, which have not hatched yet.

Baby Great Tits Too!

While I was watching the birdbox to see whether we had blue tits or great tits nesting in our nestbox, a great tit turned up and was looking around to check it was safe to enter the box with some food. To my surprise this bird then flew into one of the other boxes near to the one I saw the chicks in yesterday. After both parents had flown off I took a quick picture to see what was in this box (it is too high for me to look into quickly, so I just held the camera up and took a snapshot).

The Great Tits appear to prefer the plastic fleece material for their nests. The Great Tit nest last year was made from the same material (which was over the top of the water butts in the garden to try and keep muck out of them).

Baby Bluetits

After the disappointment of realising that our nestbox fitted with a camera was not going to be used by the birds this year, I got a surprise this weekend. I was checking whether one of the older nextboxes had anything in it as it had been used by a Peacock butterfly over the Winter to hibernate. To my amazement I found three baby chicks looking up at me (I say looking, but they are still blind actually). There appear to be seven more eggs which have not hatched yet.

We've Got Ducks!

While working on the new garden fence at the weekend, Caroline suddenly exclaimed "We've got ducks!". I looked over to the pond, and there were a couple of Mallard ducks swimming around as happy as anything, sticking their bums in the air as they fed off the bottom! We were amazed. They stayed long enough for me to take some quick photos before flying off.

New Fence and Last Breath of Winter

The first day of Spring, and one of the more Wintery looking mornings of the past 6 months! We got a light dusting of snow overnight, and woke to this view of the garden. We have been working hard in the garden over a couple of weekends to replace the fence along the entire length of the garden as seen on the left side of this picture. So far we have put up 6 new panels, with 7 and a bit to go. The bulk of the work has actually been in removing the old fence, which was held in place by 20 years of ivy growth. We took the opportunity to dig this out, roots and all on both sides of the fence, along with several Elderberry trees which were pretty well established. The garden already looks much lighter, and we seem to have much more border space than before. This is not because the fence line has moved! We replaced it along the same line. Our neighbour also seems to have more useable border space too. It is the effect of using a lower and more open fence panel style, which we made by combining some 90cm high panels with 60cm lattice panels on top, where there used to be 180cm tall solid lap panels (plus all that ivy of course).

Frogs Spawn in New Pond

I was pleased to discover this morning that the frogs have spawned this year, and chosen the new pond to do so. I grabbed a quick picture as it was a nice morning. There looks to be a lot more spawn than we ever got in the old pond, so I guess they like the new facilities! The new pond has a choice of habitats, and as I expected, they chose the shallower area to leave their spawn. The patch of frog spawn measures about 80cm by 80cm.

End of year bird counts

We have just reached the end of the second year doing the Garden Bird Watch bird survey run by the BTO. Here is the summary data for our garden during this time. The percentages indicate how likely we are to see that particular bird species in any one week:

Species Reporting Rate
95% Collared Dove
95% Blackbird
92% House Sparrow
91% Great Tit
87% Robin
87% Chaffinch
82% Blue Tit
81% Greenfinch
65% Dunnock
60% Woodpigeon
59% Starling
40% Coal Tit
33% Long-tailed Tit
20% Goldfinch
8% Carrion Crow
6% Wren
6% Song Thrush
5% Jay
3% Jackdaw
1% Redwing
1% Mistle Thrush
1% Blackcap
1% Siskin

That makes 23 different species in total. The most we have seen in a single week is 16, and on an average week we see 10 different species. In order to be counted the bird has to be seen making use of the garden, not just seen from the garden. So we can't count birds just flying over (unless they are feeding on insects over the garden for example).

Pond Progress in the Hot Weather

During the past few weeks we have made some progress on the landscaping around the pond during exceptionally hot weather. My parents came up for a weekend and helped get on top of the problem weeds around the top end of the pond, which was much appreciated. We found the weather to be too hot for much hard manual labour, so progress on the landscaping has been slower than we expected. But we are slowly getting the ground levelled along the side of the pond, and the gravel path laid. We are re-using the gravel which was originally covering the whole area of the pond, but it requires sifting out all the soil and washing before it can go down on the new path. We are collecting all the muddy water from this operation and using it to water the garden, so it is not wasted.

The bog garden is looking well established now, and we have really enjoyed the flowering plants. Most of the plants appear to be happy in their new location, and the hundreds of tiny frogs which have emerged from the pond are certainly happy in the damp shade around the plants. A lot of water has evaporated in the hot weather and we are hoping for some rain soon. I have had to put some tap water in the pond to keep the level from dropping too far, but I want to keep this to a minimum because the mineral content can cause the blanket weed and other algae to take over the pond.

Caroline has created the pebble beach area in the shallow bay of the pond, to blend into the gravel path. This is to provide easy access to the pond for small mammals and birds (as well as us!). She has also positioned various larger rocks in the water.

The results at the end of another weekend

Completed Bog Garden

The bog garden and marginal plants garden beds are now finished, and mostly planted up. We have also moved the marsh marigold from the small water feature pond to the new large pond, as it was getting a bit big for the old location. We decided to put the marsh marigold directly into the main pond, and just pack some aquatic compost around the roots.

Now we have started work on the landscaping around the pond. You can see the start of the gravel path which we are putting on top of the rubble. We are putting down weed surpressing fabric to try and keep the weeds at bay.

Bog Garden Mark II

We were alarmed to see that several of our new bog plants were looked decidedly unwell in the new bog garden. Consulting our various books we discovered that what the garden centres call 'bog plants' generally mean plants which like damp conditions, but not water logged. It never occurred to us that our bog garden should not be boggy! What we have created is a marginals garden, for plants which like their roots permanently in water.

So we decided to add a bog garden which will be damp but not wet, to accomodate our 'bog' plants. This bed is lined with plastic bags, but we have stuck the garden fork through them to provide drainage for any excess water that is not held in the soil. Now that the pond is full I have been able to build up the sides at a couple of low points so that they are perfectly level. The pond should now overflow into the bog garden bed when we have prolonged wet weather, keeping all the plants happy.


Caroline filling the bog garden with soil.