What a frustrating week! Here in North West England we’ve had at least three and a half days of windy and rain-filled days. Now on Friday and with the promise of better weather for weekend, the morning was still cloudy, grey and breezy from the north - not the best for birding or photos.
All week I watched the garden fill with Goldfinches, and where like many British gardens, the highly successful Goldfinch is a common and often numerous visitor. Other species qwe see are typical suburban companions - Blackbird, Dunnock, Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit, Robin, House Sparrow, Greenfinch, Starling, Magpie and Wren. This week we’ve had a couple of visits from a Great-spotted Woodpecker, but mainly it’s Goldfinch galore.
So this morning and with our south facing garden sheltered from the breeze I decided to do some garden ringing and see just how many Goldfinch are around. I did rather well by way of 33 birds - 23 Goldfinch, 4 Blackbird, 2 House Sparrow, 2 Blue Tit, 1 Dunnock and 1 Woodpigeon.
As one might expect at this time of year there are lots of juvenile Goldfinches about with my catch split 14/9 in favour of newly fledged birds. All of the adult Goldfinch were in various stages of their main post breeding moult.
Goldfinch
Goldfinch
Goldfinch
A juvenile Blackbird showed serious faults at the tip of the tail suggesting a food shortage immediately prior to its fledging.
Blackbird
Blue Tit
Dunnock
Woodpigeon
There’s ringing and/or birding tomorrow with more news and views from Another Bird Blog.
Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog.
Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog.
.jpg)
12 comments:
Such a gorgeous series here, Phil! So lovely to see!
That was quite a good session for your garden, amazing.
All the best, Gordon.
Hello Phil,:) Such a wide variety of visitors to your garden! I hope the good quality of your shots means that your camera has now been repaired! Goldfinches are coming to my feeders now, and the Long-tailed tit, a bird I hardly ever saw,... however I wish I could see a Dunnoch in my garden. Have a great Weekend.:)
The Woodpigeon looks so friendly
Have a great week-end!
WOW that is quite a lot of birds to have caught and placed rings on just in your own backyard...well done, I should say. We have had just the opposite of rains here.
Phil the entire months of May and June were so dry that we are still well at a few inches under what we need and I mean a good soaking kind. I have had to drag my hoses all over the acreage a few times in the morning and early evening, taking two hours each pull to get it all watered and I am worn down. Last night we heard thunder, saw lightening and prayed. We got a sprinkle that hardly got the deck wet. Oh well more watering as now July 1 brings the extreme heat and dry weather with it~
Hello, Phil! Sorry about the bad weather, I would get cabin fever after awhile. Your yard birds are beautiful. You captured a lot of Goldfinches, they are lovely birds. Awesome closeups of all the birds. Thank you so much for linking up and sharing your post. Happy Saturday, enjoy your weekend!
Nice pics of your bird series. Always interesting to see your finches and how different they are than the ones in my area.
never saw a goldfinch with red ever but surely saw hundreds on thistles growing up in /wva
Very beautiful birds.
Such a wonderful variety right in your own garden, Phil! They all look so sweet, except for maybe the pigeon who looks terrified, lol. But then they always look terrified! Wishing you better birding weather!
Très belle série ;-) Céline & Philippe
So many wonderful kinds of birds. Love the goldfinches!
Post a Comment