How does your garden sound?

[pastoralguy]

Here in South Edinburgh, Mrs. PG and I put a bird table in the corner of the front drive. It's been commandeered by the local sparrows and we've counted up to 70 sitting on the feeder and hedge. What a noise they make! A singing hedge a friend of mine calls it!

Only trouble is that it's costing us a fortune to maintain it with food.

Ah well...

[salymap]

I seem tojust feed one hungry squirrel at the moment. The birds ignore the nut cage until the squirrel drops half his booty, then he scampers off and sits in a tree glaring at me.

He gets very cross when I disturb him and waves his front feet [arms?] in a threatening manner

Actually he's very funny to watch. Vermin ? not to me.

[amateur51]

the odd peregrine if we're lucky.

How is old Worsthorne these days?

They don't come much odder

(due to be ninety on 22 December - hope you get there, old timer ;bubbly:)

[Richard Tarleton]

How is old Worsthorne these days?

They don't come much odder

(due to be ninety on 22 December - hope you get there, old timer ;bubbly:)

Believe it or not my mother wanted to call me Peregrine I don't know how seriously she pressed the case but luckily it didn't happen. This was aspirational more than anything - her father was a shipping clerk and from a long line of Lancashire shoemakers and saddlers I think my father may have pointed out that this would have condemned me to be beaten to pulp on a regular basis by the school bullies.

[Mary Chambers]

From the title I expected this thread to be about birdsong and the like.

That was my first thought, too. Lots of birds here, though I can't beat pastoralguy's 70 sparrows. I do have sparrows, though, and most other common garden birds. When I'm unlucky, there are pigeons, although this is suburbia rather than city. My favourite birds are the long-tailed tits, so pretty.

I can hear traffic, faintly, from the main road if I'm in the garden, but not at all in the house. There is hardly any traffic in this road, because it doesn't go anywhere. At the moment the only house close to mine is empty (though sold), so this is really a very quiet place. It could change suddenly when the new people move in! I value the quietness very much.

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, I expected birdsong too... livelier now the moult is almost over, the orchard dispensers eaten out every day by this years' Green-, Chaff- and Goldfinches, Blue and Great Tits feasting on nuts and suet...Long-Tailed Tits as ever keeping it in the family.
Dunnocks in their usual flirtacious threesomes, Blackbirds still skulking silently in the undergrowth, Jackdaws getting noisier and flocking again after their summer dispersal (this almost seems to happen in a single day after the young are big enough for their parents to ignore their pleas for food. The daylong cacophony of KIA and UK-KAW suddenly isn't there one morning. It seems very empty!). The Buzzards, soaring over all summer with their augmented "MEW!" have diappeared too. Their young must have fledged.
Our Magpies are always scolding the local Cats and Foxes...

That unforgettably resonant "KRONK, KRONK!" drew my attention to a pair of Ravens last Sunday, flying directly towards Moel Famau, where I last saw them over 20 years ago!

The Robins haven't started singing yet, always a true sign of autumn's cooling. They often do this by the streetlights at night in the winter. Last birdsounds now are always the Crows, with their excitable dusk acrobatics!

[Richard Tarleton]

Suburban gardens often support much higher densities of birds than open countryside, because of the amount and variety of food on offer.....we're on the edge of countryside with fields and woods....the seed and nut feeders are also a feeding station for the local sparrowhawk who takes a toll, but that's why blue tits have so many young....I can usually tell by the alarm calls when she's made a pass. Our garden birds sound similar to jayne's. Being close to the estuary means plenty of flyovers - the rule for the garden bird species list (currently standing at 80) is that you have to be in the garden when you see it.

[HighlandDougie]

The Robins haven't started singing yet, always a true sign of autumn's cooling.

Alas, they have here in the north. About to flee back to the south where my winter will be greatly cheered by the song of one of my favourite birds, the blackcap, as well as the blackbirds stuffing themselves on the olives, which I'm much too lazy to pick (and I'm sure that the birds will derive a lot more pleasure than I would from some not very good oil).

[doversoul1]

I think this is the nearest to (I) Fagiolini we can grow in the UK. They did very well in my garden (the beans, that is)

Borlotto

http://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Vegetable+Seeds/Popular+Vegetable+Seeds/French+Bean+Seeds/Dwarf+French+Bean+Borlotto+Firetongue_197011.htm

Back to digging

[jayne lee wilson]

Suburban gardens often support much higher densities of birds than open countryside, because of the amount and variety of food on offer.....we're on the edge of countryside with fields and woods....the seed and nut feeders are also a feeding station for the local sparrowhawk who takes a toll, but that's why blue tits have so many young....I can usually tell by the alarm calls when she's made a pass. Our garden birds sound similar to jayne's. Being close to the estuary means plenty of flyovers - the rule for the garden bird species list (currently standing at 80) is that you have to be in the garden when you see it.

80 sounds good - I never counted mine! I'll have a go later. No estuary to bump it up though, sea about 2 miles away. Sparrowhawks mainly terrorise the Ferals here (whose numbers reached 42 in the heat wave, about 25 daily now (8 residents). I heard a Robin at last in the deep dusk this evening - it must know what's coming later this week. I do see Blackcaps in the winter but they never sing here then...

[Flosshilde]

From the title I expected this thread to be about birdsong and the like.

I did think of calling it 'Composing your garden', but thought that people might think it was a mis-type for 'composting'; 'Plants called after composers' sounded rather prosaically obvious, so I decided that 'How does your garden sound' would be more interesting & a nice play on 'How does your garden grow'. So could we get back on topic, please?

[Beef Oven!]

Has anyone else got plants named after composers (or any other musicians)?

I've got a Robert Plant.

[teamsaint]

Originally Posted by Flosshilde

Has anyone else got plants named after composers (or any other musicians)?


No, but with all the rain this summer, most of mine have been Berli oz'd.

[edashtav]

The musical saw has ruled our garden for a fortnight whilst 25 trees (including 20 in a rampant coniferous hedge) have been felled. It occurs to me that I don't know which composer first wrote a saw part for an orchestral work. Answers please ...

[teamsaint]

The musical saw has ruled our garden for a fortnight whilst 25 trees (including 20 in a rampant coniferous hedge) have been felled. It occurs to me that I don't know which composer first wrote a saw part for an orchestral work. Answers please ...

well here is a tune featuring a saw though not orchestral. (track 12 Better home. )

http://mainlynorfolk.info/eliza.carthy/records/laylam.html

Sorry can't find a link to listen to , but I have seen it played live this very year.
Lucy Farrell did the B and Q ing.