Wednesday 15 July 2009

The birds


For me, birds and gardening go together. I wouldn’t want one without the other. I’m lucky with this garden; there was already a well established population of residents and visitors when I arrived. The chaffinches dominate in the winter. Flocks of twenty or thirty individuals come dipping and chattering in, to sit in the rowan tree and fight over the feeders and bird table. The starlings are always around. They resemble a crowd of rowdy bikers, zooming into the garden with their black feathers gleaming like studded leather jackets. They screech to a halt at the table, toss whatever is on offer around and then rev up and leave at high speed for the next garden. Despite this bad boy image they are devoted parents and have successfully reared two large broods this year. The pic shows an adult with part of their first brood at the table in May.

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