British birds

I put my camera to the test at the weekend, taking pictures of wild birds. A bit harder to capture on camera than my parakeets, although a good selection of treats hanging from the trees makes it a bit easier.

Blue Tits

perfectly balanced!

Great acrobats

Green on the back. The delicate feathers almost look like fur.

Great Tit

A female I think.  The male has a much bolder belly stripe.

Coal Tit

The very small Coal tit.

Reed Bunting

A male reed bunting. I was surprised to see one of these next to the car park.

Bullfinch

One of my favourites, a male bullfinch.  Struggled to get an in-focus picture through the twigs.

and the female

Chaffinch

A male chaffinch

and the female

Robin

a delicately coloured robin

Blackbird

A bold male

and the female 

Never make a plan!

Things have not gone to plan:-


1. I had to separate the turks from the bourkes in the green aviary. The usually placid bourkes got very aggressive when the nest boxes were put up, especially towards Goldie.

2. All the turk hens got ill. Ruby was the worst and despite my best efforts I lost her. She was the weakest looking of the hens and I don’t think she fared to well over the winter. It’s very frustrating to get the birds through the harshest winter in decades only for them to get poorly at the start of the breeding season. Goldie is still not right and the attacks from the bourkes and over-attention from her mate Rudolph hasn’t helped. They’ve now been separated.
Young phoenix also got ill, although I think her illness was stress related due to sharing the aviary with an overly-randy Scar. A few days in isolation and she appears to have made a full recovery. The males are in prime condition and are really desperate to breed....unfortunately there are now no adult hens available.

3. Scar is now feeding young Flame...perhaps Flame is a hen after all, although Scar is desperate to breed with anything.

4. Rosie has laid enough eggs to make a good size ommellet. 9 eggs, all of which are infertile. She did this last year. I’m suspecting she’s a lot older than I was led to believe when I bought her.

5. Perky has also laid a lot of eggs. 7 in total, although some do appear to be fertile...some good news!