Birdwatch

We've lived in our house a little over two years now. When we moved here the only type of bird which regularly visited our garden was the greenfinch. We always used to feed the birds at our old house and we encouraged many different types of birds to pop by. I wanted the same here so we started offering different types of food and it did the trick.

Sparrows are one of the most common birds in the UK though their numbers are declining and it's said they're now a lot rarer than they used to be. You wouldn't know that here though, there's always sparrows to be found in our garden.

We still get plenty of greenfinches. They love the black sunflower seeds.

I think the most common birds to our garden are the great tits, they're always around the feeders but are rather skittish so they're in and out throughout the day, never staying long to seek out the food they're after.

Archie isn't at all happy when there's a pigeon in the garden, they're the only type of bird which he chases. I don't mind them, they hoover up all the bits which the other birds have dropped and clean up after them.

Dunnocks can be easily mistaken for sparrows, in fact they're also known as hedge sparrows. Their beaks are more pointier than the sparrow's thicker beak.

We used to get lots of thrushes in our garden when I was a child but we didn't get them at our old house. They do visit our garden now and they come in large flocks when the berries on the rowan trees are ripe in autumn. We've recently replaced a diseased ornamental cherry tree in our front garden with a yellow berried rowan so I'm hoping to see even more thrushes now.

Blackbirds visit regularly. Again, they're happy to hoover up anything which drops from the feeders but they also hop around the garden looking for worms.

Blue tits are regular visitors to the feeders. I've hung a nesting box this year but they haven't bothered with it. It took quite some time in our old house before we got birds nesting in the box so I'm still hopeful that they'll take up residence in the future.

Large numbers of starlings flock to the feeders when we put suet pellets or a suet block out but we still get odd ones visiting at other times too.

We have a pair of robins which are regular visitors, one much plumper than the other scrawny one. Robins are very territorial so I suspect that they're a pair. They're very friendly and are always waiting by the feeders for a juicy titbit.

It's always lovely to see the fledglings, the adults often bring their babies and we watch whilst they feed them.

It's been nice to watch as each new kind of bird has found the feeders and become established visitors over the last couple of years. The newest ones to arrive have been the long-tailed tits. These birds visit in flocks, there's always more than one at a time. It's been a delight to see them as these are another bird we never saw at our old house.

Collared doves and coal tits also visit on a regular basis and red kites are always flying above, though I haven't actually seen one visit the garden. They're wonderful to watch though. We used to get great spotted woodpeckers visiting but we haven't seen them for a while. Goldfinches used to be the bird we saw most at our old house but we're still trying to encourage them here. We've seen the odd one on the lane so we know they're about, we've put out niger seed in the hope of enticing them here.

Do you enjoy watching the birds in your garden? What do you do to encourage them?

Please excuse the poor quality of the photos, they've all been taken from the house through the window and the window cleaner hasn't been for a while!