A World Outside Your Window

   

I generally need no excuse to watch birds but ice and snow over the weekend before Christmas meant that it was almost impossible to get out without donning ice skates, so amidst all the chores I was able to watch the comings and goings at the bird feeders in the garden.

 

Now our garden is small but quite busy and the activity is always entertaining, though I do realise that the birds are not there to entertain us, they are too busy trying to survive in the cold weather. What has pleased me recently is the number of house sparrows that have been coming to the garden, sometimes up to 20 in number. When you look start to look closely at sparrows you notice how the markings vary so much and you begin to recognise individual birds. In sparrow communities a male with the most amount of black on its breast is the alpha male, basically the leader of the gang who has priority over the food. As a matter of interest the house sparrow is the only species worldwide where the males and females are different, an interesting fact to drop in the conversation at dinner parties!

 

As well as the sparrows, starlings often congregate in big numbers, 55 is the most so far, and they particularly like to gather on our television aerial late afternoon and seem to enjoy a good chat before setting off for a communal roost somewhere. I like to think that my starlings are part of the huge group that entertain the crowds in Brighton of an evening.

 

Our dunnock has a pretty hard time of it. The robin, who has seen off any attempts by others of its own kind from visiting our garden, has decided that it might as well vent its frustration on the nearest relative it has in the UK, so the poor dunnock that really keeps itself to itself is constantly harassed and chased away, but generally manages to sneak back and get enough food when the robin is looking away.

 

There is a distinct pecking order at the feeders. Through sheer numbers and general feistiness the house sparrows tend to dominate, though a few greenfinches will brazenly challenge them and quite often win and the goldfinch, though slimmer, seems very capable of holding onto a perch once it gets there.

 

Blue tits and great tits use their speed and agility to get in when they can while the poor old tiny coal tit is really at the bottom of the heap when it comes to feeder hierarchy. It has to be a real opportunist and while two larger birds are arguing about rights to the feeder perches it will dart in grab a seed and then retreat to a safe place.

 

What is so nice about watching birds in your garden is that slightly more unusual birds can turn up. A few days ago a party of ten long-tailed tits passed through the garden, their gentle purring noise somehow penetrating through the windows, and then a female blackcap turned up for a day.

 

As the cold weather persists the likelihood of more unusual birds turning up increases so by February you might get visited by siskins and redpolls and you never know you might get star birds like waxwings suddenly appearing, like a lucky few people did in Worthing and Brighton last winter.  Now that is a treat.

 

Photographs by David Ball

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