Add your "Odds & Sods" here thread ... 2020

OMG!

Linda257 said:

I have never seen either of those birds before...now added to the must see list!

Chiffchaffs are the easiest to start with and best way to find one is to learn what they sound like. Fortunately they have the easiest bird song of any to recognise and once you know it, it will be an iconic sound of Spring. It will then be much easier to find one by following the song and there should be plenty singing down wooded lanes and in scrub habitats for the next few weeks.

Thanks for that Nigel, one shall do ones homework and hopefully see one soon!

Brilliant Linda, made me grin. I had wondered what you will make of them when they start multiplying!!!
Hazy has good experience there:-)

gaynorsl said:

Hazy has good experience there:-)

I'm not sure she would agree with "good". A lot of, certainly

lol...well we did have 5 last summer.....och a will just send them next door if there are toooooooooo many

I love watching the antics of Squirrels, but after hearing about Hazy's experience with them, we have put baffles on every feeder pole and placed the poles far enough from anything the Squirrels can leap from but close enough to cover so the birds are happy. We have reduced the number of visiting Squirrels from 6 to 2 again (which was the number we had before beginning to feed the birds in our new garden last year). Success, and without expanding the Squirrel population artificially, or transporting or murdering any (so far!) And we still have the fun of watching them trying to work out how to get at our bird feeders. There is a lot of shinning up feeder poles, only to be blocked by the see-through plastic-dome baffle. We can almost hear them, "So near and yet so far--arrrgh!" They do sometimes get some dropped bits, but so do our Blackbirds, Robins, Dunnocks, Wood Pigeons and the occasional Crow, Magpie, Jackdaw and Jay.

Unknown said:

There is a lot of shinning up feeder poles, only to be blocked by the see-through plastic-dome baffle.

Keep an eye on the baffle screw as we had one or two squirrels that were so frustrated by the baffle dome they started to gnaw through the green holding ring - shredding it to pieces.   The problem with that is the baffle screw ended up half the size but thankfully still held the dome in place but the gnawing caused shavings of green plastic on the ground which we had to ensure were cleaned up in case any birds or other wildlife ingested the plastic shavings.     As you know,  squirrels are the most determined of animals that won't be put off by feeder or dome protectors and it becomes their form of a daily challenge to solve the puzzle    LOL        I loved watching the squirrels using their smart brains to try conjure up solutions to get to food sources - but I do not miss seeing them anymore since we moved  !!    

I notice they only try the poles if they have no peanuts left in their own feeder so they are pretty well behaved....for now but if they do get out of hand then its my other halfs problem as he loves Grey Squirrels , I enjoy watching them too but the birds are more my thing.

Two from this morning's walk. :-)