Mine has to be earlier this year, January or February. The weather was dry but blowing an absolute gale, I was in the kitchen and had the cold water tap running. Then right outside my kitchen window, in a terraced house in the centre of Billingham.......... a grey wagtail ! I assume it had been blown about a bit, and had been attracted by the running water ! :)
We generally do quite well for common birds in our garden in Hartburn - Brambling was my most 'uncommon' - but I think my best ever birds were a male and female Sparrowhawk which turned up last winter to take advantage of a flock of Starlings that were frequenting my garden.
pied blackbird.. ;)(//)
Come off it Lee, that's obviously a stuffed blackbird that was on top of your wardrobe while you were emulsioning the ceiling ! ;D
;D ;D that bird was the reason i live in the house i do .me and the wife went to view the house .she was walking round talking to the agent saying how big the room's were ect .i looked out the window seen the bird in the garden ;D then we got the house. ;D the neighbor told me it had been around for 4 years or so. it was very tame and came withing 2 feet of me when i sat in the garden. last i saw of it was december last year :( now another blackie has took his old stomping ground ;D this one has a white spot on the back of his head. so maybe some of the old bird's blood lives on.. ;)
I only get the common garden birds in my garden, I have had Goldfinch feeding on the Nyjer seed feeders, they were nice to see, but the best bird in my garden was probably a female Sparrowhawk which was having a Starling for breakfast back in 2003. My Son was fascinated by this and it sparked an interest in birds which carries on to this day.
We still love watching Birds Of Prey, we have the female Sparrowhawk to thank for that :D
Not in my back yard, but in the little cut beside my house. Remember that alomost total eclipse we had a few years ago? Everything went eerily quiet, dark and cold, all the birds stopped singing and calling, then a big female Sparrowhawk came speeding down the cut, grabbed a female Sparrow, and dismembered it in front of us about twenty feet away. Very weird!
My Dad saw a male reed bunting in the garden once but I was out so he couldn't show me it .
Wryneck, Hobby and Waxwing are pretty good birds on my garden list, also in winter there's usually several Reed Buntings calling in from Billingham Bottoms. A brood of Blue Tits have just fledged as they do most years. What i'm really proud of though is the resident flock of about 25 House Sparrows which are constantly present.
Wryneck, Hobby and Waxwing ! :o In your garden ? yerjokinarentyer ! Nowt wrong with house sparrers like, been my inspiration since I was a kid :)
best bird seen in our seaton carew garden was a female redstart and a young one in 2005.they rested over for a couple of days before moving on.
This morning, I saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker fly over my garden and land on a tree 3 doors away. This is the first time I have seen one from my back garden!
i live in the hart station area of hartlepool
we have alot of common garden birds the odd yellowhammer stops by and luckily for us
our next door neighbour has a plot of land behind his house which is left to do as it likes so has become overgrown with some quite big trees so quite often we have a pair of tawny owls in the largest tree in
our garden they then ussually fly and perch on top of the telegraph poles at the bottom of our driveway
we have also had an african grey parrot but that was an escaped pet from clavering swiftly followed by a man with a net trying to capture it !
dean