Scozmo's Photery

It was an unusual Winter visitor that kicked me off photographing our garden birds this year.

The grumpiest Fieldfare I’ve ever encountered! (That’s not many by the way) 🙂

We have quite a few Great Spotted Woodpeckers that visit the feeders, in 2023 a pair brought their young for their first fledged feedings and I think that’s why we now have several visiting but, not usually together!

Two males usually ends in fisticuffs or beak-cuffs? They don’t like sharing 🙂

The red mark on the nape of the neck shows that these are both males and haven’t noticed one another …. yet.

It’s been a while since a wandering Pheasant has drifted in.

They are such glaikit birds and great to watch and photograph. One bird we’ve had a lot of over this month are Blackbirds, young, old, male & female; a lot of them so quite a few squabbles.

Look at that face! Grumpy or what? I think I said, the Blackbirds were probably the most numerous visitors in the first month.

Along with the Starlings, I think we may have created a problem there; they had lots of young last year and we now seem to have a couple of pretty large flocks around so sometimes there are a lot of them!!!! One of the problems with the high numbers is that they can be like a plague of locusts on the feeders and drive others away!

There does seem to be one or two Starlings that come in frequently and forage around with all the other birds.

The GSW are often beaten off the suet feeder by Starling numbers.

The GSW are regulars now, there’s almost always one somewhere on the tree or feeders.

It seems to be mostly males, there are a couple, I think, of females, one being very timid, maybe a young bird.

Starlings will find a way to get to almost everything, the missing perch on that feeder is caused by them squabbling over a perch.

The smaller birds are still around of course and as the weather got worse, more of them came back to the garden.

The Tree Sparrow numbers seem to have gone up a little while the House Sparrows are down, although they do spend more time out and about elsewhere.

I’m writing this and adding the images in the order they appeared during the month so, if it jumps to and fro, that’s why 🙂

There have been a few / couple of female blackbirds dropping by now and again.

One of them has a bad foot or leg, I noticed but appears to be managing fine.

I just had to add the next sequence of shots ..

Look at that Blackbird photo-bombing the shot! 🙂

And there he is!

One bird we don’t see that often is the Dunnock, certainly doesn’t like a crowded garden and for the most part turns up when it’s relatively quiet.

A very overlooked bird, probably because of its habit of skulking around under hedges and so on but a beautiful bird.

A lot of people mistake the female Blackbird for a Thrush, which it is, but only a member of that family.

Blackbirds, Song & Mistle Thrush, Fieldfare, Redwing and Ring Ouzel, a bit of a rarity in Summer.

I loved these next two …. lucky to see and catch it.

Having said that Fieldfares are members of the Thrush family, I didn’t realise how territorial they are! This bully chased off all comers of the family, including the Mistle Thrush, which looks bigger to me.

The Fieldfares and Redwings arrived en-masse out on the patch, I saw very big flocks of them as they swept through the Rowans and demolished every berry before moving on. We didn’t get any Redwings in the garden, that I saw but, did get them in the trees around the outside.

They’re not a common bird to see and I’d guess most people haven’t seen them or even noticed them.

Another bird that is all around us in big numbers are the Corvids; Carrion Crow, Rook and Jackdaw are everywhere with a few Ravens thrown in here and there. A few young Jackdaws were brought to the garden by the adults last year and, once again, I think those are the birds that still visit now and again.

I love watching and photographing them, such clever birds.

This one was below the suet feeder, there was probably another one on there and they wait below for the dropped bits n pieces!

And then there’s the Mistle Thrush! We had one visiting the garden last year and this one turned up on the 8th….. when the Fieldfare let it in!

They’re bigger than our Song Thrush and louder, I think, when you hear one singing / calling, it could be quite some distance away, beautiful singers too!

These two didn’t appear often together, the fieldfare ruled the garden and strutted around like an over inflated bully boy!

Now, there was one visitor that we are all used to seeing but, in this case, I don’t remember ever seeing a ringed one before so, I looked up the report a ringed bird site and reported it, although I couldn’t make out the ring ID …. yet.

It’s probably really common to see these but, I just don’t remember seeing one before! I’m still seeing that bird now.

Meanwhile …

See, they cling on to those wee perches and flap their wings like mad, just for a few bits of Sunflower seed, they scatter more on the ground than they eat, I reckon.

Now, remember I said the Fieldfare defending its garden like a bully boy?

It appears that they really do not share with other Fieldfares! This was nasty! One flew off, the other strutted around a bit, showing off.

So, that was our first week of January in the garden. I hope it wasn’t all too much. Please feel free to Comment any time.

See you again soon.