For years and years I've been trying to encourage garden birds - any small birds - into my back yard, with berry-bearing trees, a large bird table, multiple cat deterrents (felines being the main reason why they are absent from Aornos). Today the first one chirruped on to one of the hawthorn trees (even though the berries aren't yet ripe. It was "only" a blue tit, but - Io triumphe! -any little songbird is welcome.
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It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. -
No blackbirds, ff? I don't know if it's just me, but I've noticed more (and more vociferous) blackbirds around this year; not just in gardens, but everywhere.They often seem to be duetting with another one some distance away. Personally, I think they are the best of songbirds with a selection of calls and whistles assembled in a way any contemporary composer would be proud.Comment
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There are chaffinches, wagtails and blackbirds in the neighbourhood. But I live in a long street which has another long street running almost parallel to it so that the two relatively small back gardens are back to back. The neighbourhood has so many prowling cats that all the birds steer clear of the enclosed back gardens or perch high up on roofs and telegraph wires. I did once attract a magpie to the bird table but I don't include them as garden birds. There are also woodpigeons, which ditto.Originally posted by ardcarp View PostIt isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.Comment
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What about starlings? They are such good mimics that their repertoire can encompass a good many other species' calls. The evening song of the blackbird is very special though, I would concur. Robin and wren hold their own, during the day.Originally posted by ardcarp View PostComment
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For some reason we don't get many starlings here. I remember one outside our student flat many years ago that mimicked the opening of Mozart's 40th Symphony. We called it the G minor bird.
I wonder if french frank has come across the Roamwild Pestoff (!) bird feeder? They certainly prevent small mammals and larger birds (eg pigeons) from nicking the bird-food.
Probably not the answer to the cat problem though.Comment
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Pretty much what we get at Bempton Cliffs - plus gannets.Originally posted by vinteuil View PostComment
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We've got yellowhammers nesting in the hedge outside the kitchen window. We see and hear yellowhammers fairly often around here, but seeing them at such close quarters, with their heads glowing in the morning sun is a total delight.Comment
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Humankind at its very best.....
The more we can do things like this - the better we, and our poor ravaged planet, will be....
Meantime I'll go on coping with the wild garden, all the creatures within it, and the latest stray cat ("Sooty", very scared, quasi-feral, needy and starving...)...Comment
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... or you could argue - this was humans interfering in the 'natural' order of things and thereby depriving other scavenger animals of necessary sustenance.Originally posted by jayne lee wilson View PostHumankind at its very best.....
The more we can do things like this - the better we, and our poor ravaged planet, will be....
We find eagles attractive : but we mustn't get speciesist
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So - only question that matters: if you'd been there, in that boat, you would have left the eagles to drown, or tried to help them...?Originally posted by vinteuil View Post
(Like most birds of prey, many Eagles are under threat, almost entirely from Humanoid planetary domination (and where their numbers recover, usually down to our enlightened, environmentally beneficial intervention) so where is the "natural order" in all of that?)Comment
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...and their characteristic song? [yellowhammer]
If you have a fertile imagination, it's saying "A little bit of bread and no cheeeeeese".Last edited by ardcarp; 05-06-21, 14:31.Comment
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Mrs C has the song locked in and regularly points it out when we are wandering down the track, cloughie.Originally posted by cloughie View Post
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