Gordon Nicholson: In A Kells Garden

Last updated at 10:24, Thursday, 08 October 2009

Gordon shares with us his view on the birdlife visiting his garden in Kells

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Well this month has been the quietest I have ever known we have not had very many birds in the garden at all. The Blackbirds are still not coming into the garden; they must still be finding plenty of berries to eat, that must be why they are not visiting the garden looking for food. But I am sure they will be back when all their food supplies are gone in nature’s pantry.

Some bad news about the female Blackbird I have been telling you about over the last few months, that’s the one that couldn’t fly very well, I have not seen it for about three weeks now, so I think the Sparrow hawk or a cat must have got it. I keep looking for it but with no luck, I hope I am wrong and it comes back, but I fear the worst.

We have also found another two dead Green finches with the trichomonad parasite disease that I was telling you about last month, which is really very upsetting when you find them. We also have another Green Finch in the garden that does not look very well, so it looks like we will have another death in the garden shortly.

Well more depressing news the Sparrow hawk has been back in the garden this month; it has killed a couple of pigeons, it would have been three, but we managed to chase the Sparrow hawk away when it had just caught another pigeon. So that pigeon was very lucky, it lost a few feathers and it had a few cuts, but it managed to fly away.

We are getting a couple of Starlings a day coming onto our suet feeders, and a few Jackdaws visiting. One of this years young Jackdaws has become very tame, it is coming right up to me for something to eat, in fact it sits on the garden seat we have close to our back door and catches the cheese suet and grapes I am throwing to it.

This month I thought I would tell you about some of the predators that the small birds visiting our garden have to avoid. Well first of all we have the Sparrow Hawk, the Hawk kills more birds in our garden than any other predator, it’s a really elegant looking bird, but when you take a closer look at its claws and beak it looks a lot more sinister bird. Something that I find very odd about the male Sparrow Hawk is it only takes small birds like Tit’s and Finches and the female takes Pigeons and Thrushes which are a much larger birds, I thought it would have been the other way around. I have never seen a male Sparrow Hawk in the garden, we just get the female Hawk visiting, and taking the Pigeons and Thrushes.

The next predator they have to be very wary of is the domestic cat; we have quite a few cats’ that visit our garden. But I have only seen one cat catch and kill a bird in our garden, but that does not mean the cats visiting our garden have not killed other birds. One of our neighbour’s cats Turbo comes into our garden nearly everyday and I have never seen Turbo going after the birds. I have seen it catch a few shrews and play with them though.

Another predator the birds have to avoid is the Carrion Crow, because they will kill smaller birds such as Blackbirds, I have only seen a Crow kill a Blackbird once, and it was not a very nice thing to see, it really upsets me when I see things like that happening. And when we have a lot of young birds in the garden during spring and summer the Seagulls snatch a lot of the young Starlings and fly off with them. I have never seen the Seagulls take any other birds just young Starlings.

The Magpie and Jay will also take chicks and eggs from the nest during spring and summer, but they don’t snatch adult birds. But I have seen a Blackbird fighting with a Magpie to protect it’s young, the Blackbird got injured but it was able to flyaway.

Well that’s all for this month, I hope a lot more birds will visit our garden next month, so I can get some decent pictures for the next article. Don’t forget to watch the new series of Autumnwatch on BBC2 for the next 7 weeks on Friday at 9pm. Until next month bye for now, and happy bird watching, Cheers Gordon.