I enjoy seeing the birds in my garden. Some of the people who I write to, probably get fed up with my descriptions of blackbirds, magpies, starlings etc. I never get fed up with seeing them, but of the regular visitors to my garden, the favourite has to be the green woodpecker.
Actually, there has been a family of them here during the summer of 1999 and I have tried hard to capture some photographs using my first rate (Olympus) digital camera. It has a very wide angle lens and to prevent the birds being too much of a dot in the distance I hold my binoculars in front of the lens. It can produce surprisingly good results, but I find it easier with subjects that don't fly away.
In August I was pleased to see an adult bird and a youngster hanging on a telegraph pole. It was common to see an adult and two youngsters on this pole. Our neighbours reported seeing the complete family of four.
More often the woodpeckers spend time on the ground, digging for ants on the lawns and paths.
Here's another bird picture. A family of great tits found that our nesting box suited them this year. On the day the youngsters flew, I was able to grab a picture of one that fluttered down to our kitchen window sill
The other day (September 99) what I can only describe as a troupe of tits flew through our garden. Many were of the long tailed variety which I don't see that often, but some were of the blue and great types. I wonder if the chap, above, had survived to be part of that troupe?
An amazing event occurred just before Christmas 1999 - actually December 23rd - when a kestrel found its way into our outside store room. This bird, I'm told it is a young female, conveniently stayed whilst I fetched a camera and then, after a few circuits of the tiny room it conveniently perched on a garden basket handle.
For the record, perhaps the rarest birds I have seen here are a hoopoe, back in about 1980 - and it still leaves me amazed that this rare, lost soul graced me with a visit and a Manx sheerwater, which a neighbour found, exhausted on the road and thought was a penguin. He brought it to me for care and attention and I had it collected and returned to the wild by a local bird rescue group.