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What have you noticed in your garden during the lockdown?

Arequipa

Hi!

I hope you are all well.
I am at home a lot more the last few weeks and have enjoyed Spring springing in front of my eyes.
Daffodils, tulips and shrubs blooming, blossom on trees, bees buzzing in the air and the evenings getting brighter...
And also the birds have just been great to watch... it is like they are all on some Spring drug...it is all go..
First I notice a significan increase in birdsong: robins, blackbirds, bluetits, and the fabulous wren.
I have a camera nestbox and unfortunately the bluetits have not chosen it this year.. but I think they are nesting nearby... as they are feeding on the peanuts and chasing great tits away from my garden.
To the left of my garden is a large tree. 2/3 up the tree, there is a woodpigeon sitting on her nest... and about 10-15 feet above this is a magpie next. A few days ago x2 magpies were having a proper tiff with the pigeon. But the pigeon stood her ground.
I just hope when the eggs hatch that the magpies dont predate the chicks.

Then 3/4 nights ago I watched 30 - 40 brent geese flying in a v formation north on their big trip to Arctic Canada.
It is amazing to see all these changes happening...I think I have noticed a lot of things I didnt have time to before, which is nice..

Oh yes... the last thing I noticed was a magpie coming into my garden with food....digging a little hole and sticking the food in and covering with bark mulch...I went out to check the other day.. and found a big chunk of meat/steak where the magpie hid it... Never realised that they do this.. As I rule I am not fond of magpies, but I admire their intelligence and determination..

What have you noticed in your garden since the lockdown?

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Mac-Chops

Juvenile Robin checking progress on some chives.

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Tiercel Dave

fryup wrote: »

there's this pair of robins that go in & out of my elephants ear (plant) with insects in their beaks..so i presume their feeding chicks...but..on closer inspection there's no sign of a nest and there's no sound of any chicks when they fly in there any idea what's going on??

Maybe gathering a beakful of insects at a time, they come out with more than when they went in?

Penfailed

We have coal tits nesting in the gaps in a dry stone wall in the garden. Found out where the nest was earlier. The adults are busy feeding the young.

two wheels good

Nothing here as exciting as a woodpecker.
Blue tits nesting in a cavity wall again. The entrance is a gap in the mortar, no more than 2cm high. So nest is invisible and inacessible.

BTW I heard on Mooney the other night that photographing a bird's nest is actually illegal. In close proximity obviously, not via zoom-lens.

[Deleted User]

two wheels good wrote: »

Blue tits nesting in a cavity wall again. The entrance is a gap in the mortar, no more than 2cm high. So nest is invisible and inacessible.

We have nest box on the wall outside our room. This year there are blue tits in it. My God they are a noisy bunch at night! I’m up around 4am feeding the baby and they’re flat out chirping at that time in the morning!

fryup

we've got starlings nesting behind our facia board, and the parents go nuts if you so much as walk past screeh screeh

Alun

SnowyMuckish wrote: »

We have nest box on the wall outside our room. This year there are blue tits in it. My God they are a noisy bunch at night! I’m up around 4am feeding the baby and they’re flat out chirping at that time in the morning!

Do you have chicks already then? Ours laid their last egg on the 1st May, so the first is due to hatch very soon now. We have a camera in the box with sound, and yes, they do get very noisy when being fed once they get a little bigger!

Alun

First two bluetits hatched this morning.

New Home

Unless there's a nature camera already installed, please, please stay as far from the nest as possible, there's a risk that if the parents feel they've been disturbed they'll abandon the nest.

YAY! for the new birdies, though.

Alun

New Home wrote: »

Unless there's a nature camera already installed, please, please stay as far from the nest as possible, there's a risk that if the parents feel they've been disturbed they'll abandon the nest.

YAY! for the new birdies, though.

I've had a webcam installed in the same nest box for the last 5 years. Have had a pair of bluetits in there every year.

New Home

Ah, excellent!!

Alun

Just seen both birds trying to feed an enormous green caterpillar to one of the chicks. It was bigger than it was!!

New Home

Their bellies are like the Tardis, they're bigger on the inside.

[Deleted User]

There must be chicks already, as the pair are flat out in and out. I’d love to get a camera at some stage down the line. I’d also like to get a camera for our hog house as we have a pair of hedgehogs again this year but I daren’t go near their box. I’d love to know if we have little hogs!

Alun

Apparently a baby hegehog is called a hoglet, didn't know that! Cute name!

NIMAN

I guess I am spending more time looking out the window, and recently have really noticed the amount of bird action out the back of my house.

I live in a rural location and have just spent a while watching a collection of little birds flying frantically around the fields and gardens near me.

I am guessing they are playing?

They are small, compact birds and from googling I am guessing sparrows.

They seem to have built a nest under the apex of my neighbours garage (this is an annual thing) and every evening they seem to do this. Fly round mad after each other but all within maybe 100 metres from their nest.

Is it the young? Or parents? Seems to be more than 2 for sure though. Or would it be more than 1 family group?

magicbastarder

when you say built a nest, do you mean in the house martin style?

NIMAN

magicbastarder wrote: »

when you say built a nest, do you mean in the house martin style?

I'll admit I had to google that .... first thing that came into my head was Paul Heaton and the Happy Hour again.:pac:

Yeah, that type of nest....so I have just learned that they are house martins.

New Home

CBear1993

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

New Home

Beg your pudding?

CBear1993

I spotted Mary , and she was quite contrary.

New Home

Right...

magicbastarder

i would beware using containers like that to put the food in - i've seen videos of hogs standing on the edge and flipping the container, and all the food ends up on the hog rather than in the hog.

New Home

Thanks for the warning, I'll change the container, now I know s/he visits, too - it was only meant for the cats.

Alun

Unfortunately the mother bird in our birdbox seems to have disappeared. Everything was going swimmingly last night up until 9pm when my scheduled recordings stopped, with 6 very strong chicks all eating voraciously. I checked again at around 10.15pm when usually the mother bird will have long taken up residence for the night, and she wasn't there.

She still wasn't there first thing this morning, but around 6am a bird arrived with food, probably the male, but by this time the chicks were in a bad way and weren't interested in food at all, probably cold from the night before. He went in and out for a while and then gave up. Then he reappeared again around noon, and up until now, he's in and out like a yo-yo, sometimes popping repeatedly in and out of the box chirping away with the same piece of food in his beak, but they're getting weaker by the minute, and only one seems to have any strength at all.

Heartbreaking, and very difficult to watch.

Penfailed

Alun wrote: »

Unfortunately the mother bird in our birdbox seems to have disappeared. Everything was going swimmingly last night up until 9pm when my scheduled recordings stopped, with 6 very strong chicks all eating voraciously. I checked again at around 10.15pm when usually the mother bird will have long taken up residence for the night, and she wasn't there.

She still wasn't there first thing this morning, but around 6am a bird arrived with food, probably the male, but by this time the chicks were in a bad way and weren't interested in food at all, probably cold from the night before. He went in and out for a while and then gave up. Then he reappeared again around noon, and up until now, he's in and out like a yo-yo, sometimes popping repeatedly in and out of the box chirping away with the same piece of food in his beak, but they're getting weaker by the minute, and only one seems to have any strength at all.

Heartbreaking, and very difficult to watch.

'Our' coal tits have disappeared too. I'm not sure if the fledglings have already left the nest. It seemed like a very short space of time between noticing they were there and noticing that they had disappeared...

Alun

Penfailed wrote: »

'Our' coal tits have disappeared too. I'm not sure if the fledglings have already left the nest. It seemed like a very short space of time between noticing they were there and noticing that they had disappeared...

I don't know about coal tits, but for blue tits, between the first egg appearing and hatching is about 2 weeks, and then another 3 weeks to fledging. Add another week for nest building and you're looking at 6 weeks in total where there'd be lots of activity.

Del.Monte

On a happier note, I live in a town centre - no garden but plenty of roofs with a variety of nesting birds - Grey and Pied Wagtails, even wall nesting Sand Martins a couple of years back, but my favourite is the resident window ledge nesting pair of Blackbirds. This year they are on their 2nd brood already with the male flat-out feeding two large fledglings, dropping food to the nest and remaining on guard duty to ward off intruding Jackdaws. Heart warming stuff and all visible from my kitchen window.

[Deleted User]

I saw a red squirrel twice in the last few days. There’s usually plenty grey ones in that area, but I’ve not seen a red one before. He’d disappeared by the time I got my phone out to take a photo.