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

[amateur51]

A dunnock, missing all Summer, has made an appearance at last.

Calamity and thing upon thing at the seed feeders, a squirrel has found them and has ripped out the feeding stations TWICE in order to get the seed to fall to the ground. I'll try repairing with gaffer tape but I fear I may need stouter and more expensive seed feeders sooner rather than later.

I do HATE grey squrrels - I swear they thumb their noses at me

[Anna]

Funny that Ams posted about dunnocks - I was going to say that during my stay in Teeside I was pleased to see lots of them in the garden plus - a rare sight for me - every morning there were 6 to 8 starlings coming for an early morning feed and bath. According to the RSPB birdwatch results for this year sightings of starlings are down by 84.2% and they are on the red endangered list, why this has happened I don't know, they used to be so common. Also, goldfinches have moved up to 8 from 14 in the top ten, due it's said to increased feeding of nyger and sunflower seeds in gardens.

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh dear (I'll get pilloried for this) - I just had to look up dunnocks to see what they look like...

If I ever saw one, I'm pretty sure I'd think it was a sparrer.

Does that make me a bad person?

[Serial_Apologist]

every morning there were 6 to 8 starlings coming for an early morning feed and bath. According to the RSPB birdwatch results for this year sightings of starlings are down by 84.2% and they are on the red endangered list, why this has happened I don't know, they used to be so common.

Yes, when I first came to live here, the large Sainsbury's car park in Bell Green used to be full of starlings; then the company inexplicably decided to install distressed bird calls, (disease risks?), since when two at most are to be seen waddling and squawking around the chained up trollies at the far end where I lock my bike, away from the PA speakers. One really misses their huge ever-morphing clouds said somewhere to have influenced Xenakis, winging their ways into central London of an evening.

[Richard Tarleton]

Oh dear (I'll get pilloried for this) - I just had to look up dunnocks to see what they look like...

If I ever saw one, I'm pretty sure I'd think it was a sparrer.

Does that make me a bad person?

Not at all - they even used to be known as hedge sparrows, but no relation

They lead surprisingly interesting lives for such dull-looking birds, being given to ménages à trois.

Also known as hedge accentors, they have a beautiful cousin the alpine accentor, found at 6,000 feet or more.

[Nick Armstrong]

...dull-looking birds given to ménages à trois.

Still waters run deep, Richard

Good to know (I refer to the rest of your post as well! )

[ardcarp]

they even used to be known as hedge sparrows

They still are in our household! Ornithologists got a bit twitchy (ho ho) about the 'sparrow' name for some reason. As I'm sure everyone knows, the word 'sparrow' just used to be applied to any small brown-ish nondescript bird at one time.

In my childhood by far the most common garden bird was the house sparrow, and I think Enid Blyton wrote some kids' story of how the male got his black bib. Despite all the Noddy and Famous Five stuff so strongly dissed nowadays, our Enid was quite a nature lover and wrote loads for children via her Miss Brown (a fictional but inspired schoolteacher).

[Lento]

I believe that Dunnocks are the only European non-mountain accentor. Not sure if the non-Dunnocks enjoy the same "interesting" sex-life. Not sure the Dunnock enjoys it either....
It's a pity about falling starling numbers. Fun to watch. Attracting them to gardens is not always a popular move with neighbours, I have found: they are rather messy birds!
Re squirrels: I only use caged hanging feeders now, more due to pigeons and parakeets, actually.

[jayne lee wilson]

A dunnock, missing all Summer, has made an appearance at last.

Calamity and thing upon thing at the seed feeders, a squirrel has found them and has ripped out the feeding stations TWICE in order to get the seed to fall to the ground. I'll try repairing with gaffer tape but I fear I may need stouter and more expensive seed feeders sooner rather than later.

I do HATE grey squrrels - I swear they thumb their noses at me

Hit the RSPB webshop for Squirrel Defenders Ams... various cages, or big clear plastic half-globes that suspend over the feeder from the top. The latter look a bit spaced-out, but they worked for me... from a distance they make the feeders look like jellyfish... !

[Richard Tarleton]

Or CK Wild Birds - the Squirrel Guardian range do work although yes they are not cheap.

Goshawks take grey squirrels, though possibly not in your neck of the woods ams.....(they are on my garden list but only as a fly-over...)

[clive heath]

We get dunnocks in W13 fairly regularly but they eschew the feeder for more mundane earth-bound sustenance. I forgot to mention that among the Christchurch Harbour/ Hengistbury Head sightings were a couple of Whitethroat and quite a few Wheatear, one of my favourite birds for the way they stand as though they did ballet as a fledgling or are doing Alexander Technique now. The brilliance of the colours of the feathers of several of the birds we saw made me wonder whether there is a moult about this time which makes them look as good as new.

[Richard Tarleton]

The brilliance of the colours of the feathers of several of the birds we saw made me wonder whether there is a moult about this time which makes them look as good as new.

Yes indeed - many small birds undergo a complete moult after the breeding season, which is why your wheatears look so fresh and bright. These also undergo a partial (body, not wing) moult in spring before the breeding season. Some birds that winter in the tropics delay their moult until they reach their winter quarters. They don't moult during migration (for obvious reasons) or during the breeding season.

The post-breeding season moult is why we see so little of small birds in the countryside in July and August - they're too busy feeding, skulking and generally building up their strength in advance of either migration or the approaching winter. Of course we see a lot of them in gardens then, if we're feeding them.

There are one or two exceptions. Stonechats, which you will have seen in Dorset, moult once a year only, in autumn, their feathers having brownish tips which wear off in the course of the winter to expose the bright colours underneath in early spring, ditto chaffinches. Willow warblers, if I remember correctly, have two complete moults a year.

Moult is different again in wildfowl, gulls and birds of prey.

[HighlandDougie]

First sighting at the French house of a red kite. Lazily spiralling around, completely ignoring the smaller birds tring to mob it. Adult male, I think, maybe en route to somewhere further south. Olive trees seem to be full of my favourites - blackcaps - so I hope that they are here to stay.

[Richard Tarleton]

Several ospreys have been breaking their journeys in Pembrokeshire, sticking around as the fishing is good....

[clive heath]

Having replaced the usual RSPB seed in the feeder with some other brand, less endowed with the black (nigella?) seeds, we found that the level was dropping significantly slower until today when the sparrows arrived attempting to feed three at a time with much hovering and flurrying of wings . Until now they have been very infrequent visitors which seemed to validate the reported drop in numbers over the last two decades so it was with pleasure that we watched the seed disappear at a healthy rate.