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I'm in Central Scotland, this morning we're on the edge of a blizzard, the hills I can usually see less than a mile away are in a white-out. My garden is in sunlight with flurries of snow blowing past horizontally and over 12 shrieking Goldfinches have just landed on the feeders which, thankfully, I filled up yesterday knowing that the weather today was meant to be awful.
The robins are hiding out in the 'Red Robin' (I'm sure they think that I planted it just for them) and making occasional sorties out to grab suet pellets and fly back to their shelter and two very fed-up looking blackbirds are sheltering in the lee of the fence. My usual crowd of chaffinches is nowhere to be seen today, even the wood pigeons are conspicuous by their absence, the wind is so strong and gusty.
I was thinking of putting the nest boxes up this weekend too.
Oh-oh, here come the siskins to oust the golfinches, I hope the sparrow hawk stays away. Real life is never dull.
The snow here in West Lothian has eased but not stopped.It's not so windy here now though it was last night. Like you're finding, there were not many birds yesterday.
I've dug out the path four times today to put down food. I think we've had about four inches so far. I'll be going out again to top up the feeders soon. The goldfinches and chaffinches have emptied one full sunflower hearts feeder today. I've had lots of chaffinches visit as well as blackbirds, starlings, sparrows, collared doves and woodpigeons. The great thrill was a brief visit from a song thrush for raisins.
There's no lying snow here yet, its all in the distance.
I've just seen the sparrowhawk for the second time in 10 minutes so I think that explains the absence of everything else, they don't want to end up on the menu. That reminds me, soup time!
no snow here in the west midlands, but i have got a pair of blue tits who already have started bringing in nesting material to the nest box this weekend- though i can't help worrying if they're starting a bit early.
where abouts in the west midlands are you @scathtiar?
sorry for the late reply BirdFeeder, ah i see from your profile that your from my neck of the woods , i live -if you know it, in the Norton area of Stourbridge,
I live in N.Ireland and had 40 gold finches in my garden November 2012, at the moment I have only got 4 could someone explain why, regards Brian.
Hi, I have a short video with blue and great tits feeding from my wife,s hand sadly I don,t know how to put it on here maybe someone can tell me how to do it,
Thanks for your help Alan, I still have 30 redpoll and lot,s of other birds but am baffled by the loss of the gold finches, no one seems to know.
My goodness, I've never seen that many Goldfinches before. I love them, such beautiful birds. Wish I had them in my garden but they rarely make an appearance here, sadly, even though I have a hanging feeder up full of nyjer seeds and sunflower hearts just for them!
Hi Ella, the best advice I can give you is put the Nyjer/sunflower hearts on a flat table feeder as it will be easier for the birds to find, once they start to visit the table then use the hanging feeders, hope this helps.