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#30DaysWild Day 5 – Bird count & Nest footage

Sunday morning bird counts, I have always enjoyed. Today was a good one in that it reflected the various stages of garden wildlife just now. The numbers aren’t particularly high and not all currently visiting species turned up either – but I didn’t expect them too.

During a one hour bird count, 10:50-11:50, the species count was just seven. Given the lush new foliage in the borders and flowers on tall stems there could have easily been more – I just couldn’t see the ground clearly.

So the tally goes – Jackdaw x1, Woodpigeon x2, Dunnock x2, Blue tit x2 (a breeding pair), Blackbirds x3, Starling juvs x3, Starling parents x4, Coal tits x2 with another 7x Coal tit chicks in the nest box. So, technically speaking, Coal tits took the top spot in the garden today! To celebrate there’s a piece of nestbox activity taken during my count below 🙂

No surprises that Starlings turned up – this was a very brief quiet moment.
Later in the day the small waterfall attracted 6x juvs at the same time!

The clean birdbath was popular – good to see partial albino male Blackbird.
A female Blackbird collected nesting material – guessing her second nest.

I felt sorry for the bedraggled looking Blue tit parent – it looked worn out.
Delighted to save it some time with some fat cake for its nest of chicks too.

A surprise visitor at the bird table came 2 minutes before count ended.
A Painted Lady butterfly perched on the sunny ledge – early for seeing it!

Video footage from nest box lasts 46 seconds, chicks heard chirping.
The small waterfall running below the box and light traffic can also be heard.

This post was published by Shirley for shirls gardenwatch in June 2016.

3 thoughts on “#30DaysWild Day 5 – Bird count & Nest footage

  1. That poor blue tit. It looks worn to a frazzle. I have felt that way before. Looked like that too. 😉 They call birds with some white feathers leucistic.

  2. I echo Lisa's sympathy for the blue tit. From the look of it it could have been more than seven chicks in the nest and so technically would be the winner of your count.

  3. Hello again to you both, thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments 🙂

    Lisa, It really was a sorry sight to see. That fat cake has to have made the feeding chore easier for a bit. Ha-ha – haven’t we all 😉 Yes, I’ve seen a leucistic siskin in the garden a number of years ago.

    Sue, I’ve seen a single Mum Blue tit look like that in a previous nest in our box. Sadly the fat cake I put out for her wasn’t enough and that nest failed. Yes, my camera lens blurs the picture a bit at this stage so it is hard to count the chicks. It gets clearer when the chicks get bigger – although we need to get up there before next Spring and try to clean the lens. I believe there is a light layer of algae on it.

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