Following on from my last blog, I wanted to add a bit of detail on my pop-up hide and the results from using it in the garden. Basically, it’s a camp chair with a camouflage cover which comes up and over – rather like a large old-fashioned pram hood. There are several zipped openings although I find that with a camera and tripod it is only practical to use the front one. There is a second opening over the front which I unzip sllightly so I can see out. I see that I’ll want to move on to a hide that is not attached to a chair. Otherwise, I am happy with this arrangement and very pleased to get this close to see the birds doing what they do and to be able to enjoy using my camera.
After I’ve settled myself in with the camera, it takes about ten minutes for the birds to come in. I put feeders out on my plum tree over the autumn and winter. I use black sunflower seed – the husks help to add organic material to my thin, sandy soil – and niger seed. I also have a bird bath.
It’s always the tits that come in first, usually Blue Tits nipping in to grab a seed and flying straight off to eat it. Great Tits generally do the same.
The Robin is also quick to come in, usually below the feeders to pick up suet pellets that I scatter on top of the hedgehog house.
These are also taken by the Dunnocks who like to ferret about in the bushes.
A little later, the finches arrive. After a few minutes in the surrounding trees, they like to come down to the feeders and stay for a while on the perches pecking out seed after seed from the feeders. They are wasteful – they can tell the quality of a seed when it is in their mouth – if it’s small they simply drop it and go for another. This autumn I have reguarly seen around twenty Greenfinch, but Goldfinch numbers are down compared to other years – four or five instead of about a dozen.
Chaffinches then come in on the ground to feast on the dropped seed.
The House Sparrows are very sedentary. For years there was a tribe further down the lane and it’s only in the last two years that they have nested under my neighbour’s roof. This is the first autumn they are coming to the feeders in my front garden.
Natural history of the Bailiwick of Guernsey 