Why do birds, suddenly appear?

(courtesy of The Carpenters, Close to you - cant stop singing it now!)

Well bit of a busy week - last weekend was The Big Garden Birdwatch.  Why is it that birds that come into the garden every day of the week, suddenly disappear when you need to count them?  On the other hand, you can be surprised at birds that appear that you've never seen before.  As we settled down last Sunday, I noticed a strange looking bird.  By the time I managed to spurt out "what was that?" of course it had disappeared into the shrubs.  Patience in birdwatching can be well rewarded and shortly after it appeared - this time there was no mistaking - a water rail!  We have been hearing squeaks from the bottom of the garden for about 3 months but never managed to see anything - at last, proof we weren't going mad!  (Hope you can make him out in my photo - had to reduce the size for download purposes so apologies for the poor quality).  On the other hand, where were the 5 blackbirds - 4 males and a female that have been regular visitors?  During the last 5 minutes one finally turned up.  We also had a solitary siskin too - they have been absent from the feeders for a while but now coming back and soon there will be hoards of them around the feeders.  Also missing was our little wren - possibly a victim of the recent spell of cold weather - I still keep a look out for him hoping that he managed to survive.  That's one of the great things about the Big Garden Birdwatch - it can provide vital information on the state of our garden birds and following the snow and ice that the whole of the UK has seen, may well give us some interesting results.  The other great thing it did was that for a whole hour, the whole family sat together in one room, no TV, radio, computers - but all with one objective to look for birds - it was great fun.

             Water Rail - photo Debby Thorne

Dunnock - photo Debby Thorne

On Wednesday, a staggering 210,567 signatures were handed into Wildlife Minister, Huw Irranca-Davies, showing public support for the campaign to end the illegal killing of birds of prey in the UK.  Lots of visitors to the Eagle Hide signed the petition having watched our fantastic eagles, both white tailed and golden and hearing the story of White G, our youngster who was found poisoned  - see Dave's blog White G  then felt moved enough to sign the pledge.  A big thank you.  Let's hope that something will now be done to stop the killing of our magnificent birds of prey.

I have been up to Loch Frisa several times this week to try and see what Skye and Frisa are up to.  We have been blessed with some really good weather - blue sky and sunshine.  Just the sort of weather for nest building.  However, these two dont seem to be in any hurry - instead they have been sat in the sunshine and then enjoying some synchronised flying - it seems such a long time since I have seen them flying like that rising up on a thermal.  We have also had some some interesting birds on the water too - two pairs of goldeneye displaying to each other, goosander and little grebes.

Loch Frisa - Looking south - photo Debby Thorne

 You can keep up with the family of white tailed eagles in Estonia - it is an excellent webcam - here is a link to the Estonian Webcam

 Dont forget the hide is open and as you can see from the photo above taken this week it is looking stunning.  Details can be found on our Mull Eagle Watch page. 

 Debby Thorne, White Tailed Eagle Information Officer, Mull