Carole's Garden

Haven't wrote about the Garden at Chez Hall for a while so here goes.  The picture below was taken a couple of weeks ago prior to my Staff and Resident Landscape Garden Consultant deciding on a slight redesign.

Gone is the Pigeon and Sparrows roundabout and a couple of feeding platforms installed.  It looks a bit better now but desperately need to trim hedges but suspect I have left it too late.  Note the expensive custom made hide at the bottom right of the picture

The House Sparrows are here in force with approximately 70 flitting between ours and the Neighbours Gardens.  Quite a few Blue Tits and Dunnocks are gathering also but no sign of Great Tits for a while.

The small flock of 8 Collared Doves are still coming into the garden and are looking for a new place to
perch with the removal of their "roundabout"

The most enjoyable site in the garden is Sparrow Bath Time.  This sometimes goes on for up to 30mins although it does not happen every day.  About 7or 8 of them spend a few minutes going crazy in the water then fly off into the Hawthorn to dry and a couple of minutes later another few arrive and the process goes on

The Starlings are now returning in quite large numbers and although they are not Carole's favourite bird as they tend to chase the smaller ones away their antics are sometimes quite hilarious.  They also enjoy a good bath and the tit bits we put out in anticipation of attracting a more exotic species and are almost immediately devoured or "stolen".

We still have a few Goldfinches joining us daily although nowhere near the amount we had last year

After getting our new garden lifer, Siskin, only a few weeks ago our garden is visited at least thrice daily by a flock of aprox 60 of them and they feed on the niger and "British Finch Mix".  Havent spotted any Redpolls with them yet as I scour the flock each day but live in hope.

Only 22 species spotted so far this year as opposed to 28 at the same time last year with no Grey Heron (one landed on top of the Greenhouse in next doors garden last year) nor the Oystercatcher which appeared 3 times in the same day last year, no Long Tailed Tits and not even a Herring Gull yet.  She also just reminded me that we are out of peanuts (you think petrol is going up fast, check peanuts out).