One of the things that still amazes us is the sheer number of birds we have in our garden – and the crazy noise they make just hanging out, you can hear them through the back door! Having never had birds at home in London (the best we got were parakeets in Bushy Park) – being able to see quite so many of them – and watch them close-up – is fascinating. The noise their wings make when they fly past your head is incredible – especially the birds in the kitchen garden (although they hide in a bush and then disappear so fast I have no idea what they are!)
We’ve seen how the robins puff themselves up over winter to stay warm, and how they get territorial with each other. It sounds strange but we’ve never actually seen more than one robin at once, let alone four (and once seven, but they’ve not returned)! We’ve seen copious numbers of long-tailed tits divebomb the fat balls at my parents’ house, but we’ve never really appreciated them until they were in our own garden.
As well as blue tits, great tits, a pair of blackbirds, a wren and sparrows (SO many sparrows!!), we’re visited by our long-tailed tits once or twice a week. We’ve seen the occasional chaffinch, and, excitingly, we have a regular woodpecker and nuthatch that come every couple of days. The more common birds are certainly getting tame – we spent a lovely afternoon (pre-lockdown) sitting out in the terrace with some friends and the birds weren’t put off at all. We’ve even had the occasional blue-tit stand on the kitchen window ledge and look in curiously!
We did wonder whether we’re feeding them too much – some of the robins and the female blackbird is enormous! But we’ve been reliably told by a friend that birds puff themselves up in winter to keep warm, so we hope that’s all it is. One of the conditions of our ecological survey is to put up various bird boxes so the birds can still nest when we close up the barns they’ve previously nested in, and there’s no way some of the birds will be able to squeeze into some of the boxes if they’re genuinely that size!!
And we still feel a sense of relief when our resident pheasant appears in the garden waiting for his food – he’s done well to survive the shoots so far. At one stage we had quite a few pheasants but they’ve not been back since…
We were surprised to see him put up with our first rook visit the other week. It didn’t last long though – as soon as he got close to the food, our pheasant chased him off successfully!
Ley Farm Cottages 
Fantastic photos!!
From Caroline’s iPad
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Enjoyed looking at all the pictures of the various birds visiting your rear garden for food
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