Buzzing Garden

After what has obviously been a good breeding season, the garden feeders are alive with birds. Young blue tits are everywhere, and after a few years being thin on the ground, the feeders are buzzing with greenfinches. Old faithfuls like magpies, jackdaws, wood pigeons and collared doves are around each day, and a juvenile great-spotted woodpecker drops in from time to time. Nuthatches have deserted me, although I know they’ll be back soon, and the garden robin is keeping out of sight, but the big difference this year is the absence of wrens and dunnocks, which don’t seem to have recovered from last winter’s bad weather. Fewer goldfinches are taking the nijer seeds, and may have temporarily found better pickings in the surrounding countryside during their annual moult. Blackbirds keep mostly out of sight, they too deep in moult, and I haven’t seen a song thrush in the garden for weeks.

House Martins have behaved very differently this year. They really didn’t return in numbers this spring, and the usual group high above the garden in the evening has not properly materialised. They breed right throughout the summer, sometimes bringing off a brood as late as early September, so there’s still time for them to make up lost numbers. By this time juveniles for earlier broods should have swelled the numbers over the cottage, but only a handful entertain us as the evening light fades. There were not many last year also, and I hear of similar happenings elsewhere; I wonder if we’re going to have problems with these wonderful little summer visitors in the future.