Bird watching in the garden

It`s a great time of the year to be bird watching in the garden the blackbirds, starlings and sparrows in our garden all have young to feed and are frequent visitors, we don`t have bird feeders or a bird table as such because of the constant danger of the sparrowhawk who is always on the lookout for a easy meal at this time of year. We tend to place food, special seeds for small birds and sultanas for the bigger birds on the garden path close to vegetation.

Our regular Mrs blackbird is starting to look a little worse for wear, hardly surprising at this time year, but I noticed her standing on one leg for quite a long time today. As I have mentioned before the theory is that they do this at certain times to conserve energy due to heat loss through the leg and foot.

Mr blackbird I swear was watching me out of the corner of his eye as he saw me with the camera poised. He comes regularly throughout the day for his sultanas and hops onto our garden seat and looks in the window if we are slow to replace his supply.

We are waiting for the dunnocks to finish fledging they have a ground nest in our wild bit of the garden which we are waiting to partially clear. All the birds including gulls, tits, starlings, magpies wood pigeons make full use of the bird bath, really essential at breeding time to keep the feathers in good condition.

The magpies use the bath to wet and soften food that would otherwise be hard to digest, large pieces of bread for example, they would be high up on my list of "Bird Brain of Britain"

Do you know what time it is, when are you putting out my sultanas?

The dunnocks are in there somewhere

Excuse me I was here first...hop it 

Those greenfly are bit of a stretch