What birds (are you/have you been) watching? What birds have been watching you?

[Bryn]

... so the two males often seen together are not pair-bonded? Because it seems they go around in pairs throughout the year, not just during any mating season.

It's even more involved than I had been taught and observed:

https://www.stalberttoday.ca/local-news/the-extraordinary-sex-life-of-the-common-mallard-1285259

[jayne lee wilson]

Very jealous of anyone like Doversoul who still sees Yellowhammers (in numbers, wow)...like House Sparrows or those lovely Corn Buntings, they disappeared from here years ago....

As for Mallards, coupled pairs tend to arrive in the garden erratically in Spring (I see them flying overhead a lot), hungry for bread and seed, but quite often you see several males pursuing a lone female, even including one part of a pair, and forcing themselves on her to mate while they have the chance.
After that, the pair-bonding simply seems to continue...

Recent Mild winters mean I haven't seen - Blackcap, Siskin, Brambing or Redpoll for years now... but Hedgehogs are doing well, a rich compensation (they love the food left out for stray Cats too...)..

And Buzzards and Sparrowhawks still soar and pounce, to liven up the Pigeons and Jackdaws...
Oh! and - we do have Ravens swooping around here regularly now, I love their calls, but where they live (surely they can't always come over from North Wales) remains a mystery... perhaps the larger woods over on the Lancashire Mosses...

It would be nice to get a Chough!

[doversoul1]

Two nests this year: one cunningly concealed among the trilliums in the back garden and the other next to the front door of my neighbour’s house in this old farm steading. That is a favourite spot where I once happened to witness by chance the eggs being hatched and the ducklings being marched by mama to the nearest pond. As well as this old mill pond for the farm, the neighbouring farmer has made a large pond/lochan, where he feeds ducks, swans, coots, moorhen and, alas, Canada Geese, hence the mallard looking for nest sites. He stocked it with fish, too, making it very attractive to the neighbouring ospreys from up the hill.

Our pond is a glorified puddle: a cat can jump across it. No birds will see it as a suitable place for their nests. I’m sure this is the same pair that has been coming here for the last few years. They turn up sometime in the day, feast on peanuts, sit on the pond for a bit and go away for the night. I had a fanciful idea that they were coming here in order to avoid all the hustle of mating and raring chicks etc., as they are here only in their mating season.

[Vox Humana]

Mrs Humana and I have just spent a sunny but challengingly windy day on the Somerset levels. I don't think I have ever heard so many Blackcaps in song - they seemed to be everywhere. Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Cetti's Warblers all in song and there was also just one Reed Warbler also singing, albeit mostly half-heartedly. Duck numbers rather few now winter is over, but we still saw all the expected species. Seven Marsh Harriers is the most I have ever seen in one day (not all at one site). Three Great White Egrets were nice. Quite a good number of Sand Martins flying around and three Swallows

[Richard Tarleton]

Not a bird but a fly - St Mark's flies on the wing today, a full 6 days early

[kernelbogey]

I've this evening witnessed something I've never noticed before.

A cock blackbird singing lustily perhaps an hour ago, in the usual bursts of song with intervals. In the next garden a robin to all apperances 'answering' the blackbird with a burst of its own song. For some minutes I listened to what seemed to all intents and purposes a conversation.

There were other birds singing in the distance, including a distant blackbird, but these two were about 20ft apart.

Were these territorial songs, and could they indeed be 'arguing' about terriitory?

[jayne lee wilson]

Butterfly update today: 1 Peacock, 1 Small Blue, 1 Cabbage White, and... 1 Orange Tip, the first for several years, here across Easter.....all very flighty as per usual Spring behaviour...

[Richard Tarleton]

Well.....birdsong is (in most of our songbird species) more to do with territory than attracting mates (except in e.g. some reedbed species...)...but only against males of their own species....and except with a very few species (e.g. blackcap/garden warbler, which are very closely related) not generally against males of other species.....I've never in many years of censusing seen a territorial dispute between blackbird and robin, they're not after the same resources....just taking advantage of intervals between the other's song to make themselves heard? Any thoughts from Vox Humana?

[Richard Tarleton]

Butterfly update today: 1 Peacock, 1 Small Blue, 1 Cabbage White, and... 1 Orange Tip, the first for several years, here across Easter.....all very flighty as per usual Spring behaviour...

Doing quite well for orange tips here - and yes they do zap about, very fussy eaters

Lovely migrant whimbrel on the river close by, haunting call, D Attenborough did a nice Tweet of the Day about them. I took this, just for the record....

[Vox Humana]

Well.....birdsong is (in most of our songbird species) more to do with territory than attracting mates (except in e.g. some reedbed species...)...but only against males of their own species....and except with a very few species (e.g. blackcap/garden warbler, which are very closely related) not generally against males of other species.....I've never in many years of censusing seen a territorial dispute between blackbird and robin, they're not after the same resources....just taking advantage of intervals between the other's song to make themselves heard? Any thoughts from Vox Humana?

There surely is some overlap between the food of Robins and Blackbirds - worms to name just one - but I have never heard of the two species competing with each other for territory. Might the Robin have been conserving energy by deliberately not singing against the Blackbird? After all, there's no point in singing if your efforts are going to be drowned out. But that's only a wild guess.

I had a lovely day out yesterday on the south coast, getting sunburnt and seeing almost nothing. I did see my first Whitethroat and Sandwich Terns of the year and a couple of Cetti's Warblers, although "views" is barely the appropriate word for the last.

[LezLee]

2 collared doves, 2 woodpigeons, 1 wren, several male blackbirds chasing each other in between bathing and to my delight, 2 bullfinches, both male but feeding together on the hawthorn.
One orange tip, only the second I've ever seen anywhere. Last evening 11 bats came low over the fence, twittering sweetly. They seem almost to be in formation with one leader in front. I love bats.

[Bryn]

Orange tips appear to be doing relatively well. I observed one in the garden last week while burning the dried tree trimming in the garden incinerator (on the top of the chimney of which I placed the H3-VR to record the dawn chorus a couple of days later).

[sidneyfox]

I have observed three Orange Tips in my garden this year (from garden CCTV). I don't understand why three, I've only observed them in pairs down the years.

[Serial_Apologist]

A Great Tit was just outside my window this afternoon, pecking repeatedly at a crevice in the wall - presumably for grubs.

[sidneyfox]

Last night Tawny Owls (4.00am Chingford NE London). I heard them for sure but couldn't see them.