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Post by rowanberry on Nov 12, 2020 20:00:47 GMT
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Post by Tringa on Nov 12, 2020 23:05:56 GMT
I agree, nuthatch and chaffinch.
Against the light there is, understandably, not much to see in the first one but the shape suggested nuthatch to me before I read you post.
Dave
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Post by aeshna5 on Nov 13, 2020 5:33:09 GMT
Also agree Nuthatch & Chaffinch.
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Post by rowanberry on Nov 13, 2020 10:03:30 GMT
Thanks! It was terribly difficult to even get these very bad shots, they were so high and backlit.
We hardly ever get to see chaffinches, so it's good to know there are some about.
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Post by aeshna5 on Nov 13, 2020 10:25:45 GMT
Thanks! It was terribly difficult to even get these very bad shots, they were so high and backlit. We hardly ever get to see chaffinches, so it's good to know there are some about. May well be Scandinavian birds. Resident birds in London at least have become very scarce over the last couple of years, though last winter I had some sizeable wintering flocks that disappeared by March. The BTO is doing research into causes of the decline, but wouldn't be surprised if the cause is similar to that implicated for Greenfinch. A few London birders have also commented recently about the lack of Blackbirds. Though I did count 12 on my local patch last Sunday which again may well be migrant birds, there seem to be few about. None in my garden or local park, yesterday doing over 3 mile walk along the Thames between Putney 7 Barnes just the one, again just one at a site I work a couple of days at in Richmond & none at a site in Battersea where there used to be several. Ralph Hancock who does a daily blog of the bird & other wildlife of Kensington Gardens & Hyde Park has only seen one & another friend who monitors a cemetery in Fulham has said much the same. It is worrying!
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Post by ianr on Nov 13, 2020 10:46:25 GMT
Hi rowenberry your putting up some really nice photos lately When I looked at the EXIF data on flickr I see your using cs2 to process them if you look around I'm sure you'll find a slider that will lighten the shadows up a tad. I'll bring out some extra detail and colour Also looking at the 2 mushrooms I'd go with lilac bonnet but I don't think the other is a stinkhorn just an old stem from some other shroom ian
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Post by Tringa on Nov 13, 2020 11:18:56 GMT
Interesting comments about chaffinches and blackbirds. Here in our bit of east London chaffinches are very uncommon. Uncommon enough for us to comment if we see one in the garden. They were never common in the garden but a few years ago we would see them now and again, but not now.
This year there also seem to be fewer blackbirds here.
Dave
The only other area of the the UK I know well is in NW Scotland and chaffinches are very common there.
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Post by ianr on Nov 14, 2020 8:20:20 GMT
I still hear the odd chaffinch around the gardens here and a walk through the woods will almost always reveal a few though no where near as many as a few years ago.
As for blackbirds here there seem to be dozens around the gardens especially the back gardens. Looking out of my kitchen window any day recently and I'll see half a dozen on the ground my garden is really quite small plus another six or eight in the next doors holy and others coming and going all the time.
Lots of small birds too, tits, sparrows, goldcrest and goldfinch. Topped of with our own small two to three dozen starling murmuration most evenings:D ian
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Post by aeshna5 on Nov 14, 2020 11:50:27 GMT
Are your Blackbirds recent arrivals, Ian? Certainly a large passage of Blackbirds was reported in recent weeks along with Song Thrushes & Redwings, but not much yesterday. I'm now making a conscious effort to record the numbers of Blackbirds on all my walks. Because it used to be ubiquitous I never kept numbers unless I was conducting a survey like BBS. Yesterday we left home & walked for over 3 hours along reasonable habitat along the River Brent, down the canal & round a small park with plenty of "wild" vegetation. Probably 8 miles round trip & just 3 Blackbirds! I would normally have expected maybe about 20?
After a fairly good breeding season even Goldfinches, our commonest finch down here now, has been much scarcer this autumn. Not noted more than a couple on the feeders though there's heavy competition with 30+ House Sparrows, but down my road there's a number of Italian Alders as street trees which normally support 30-40 birds- no such flock this season. Though I sometimes get a few when I'm out I haven't seen so many recently & even 10 birds is now a good count!
Given how rapidly disease has spread around the globe affecting our own species that none of us had heard of a year ago, it is worrying that diseases may be affecting some of our garden birds, some such as Greenfinch being well documented.
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Post by ianr on Nov 15, 2020 10:00:16 GMT
Are your Blackbirds recent arrivals, Ian? There always seem to be blackbirds around here well established back gardens of various sizes and the woods across the road all help and throughout the summer there were young to be seen and heard out the back. So multiple broods I'd assume. On the other hand most of the birds in and around at the moment are quite skittish and competitive so I'd say migrants. There feeding on the holy, rowan and cotoneaster plus anything else growing in the gardens and put out. The other year I watched a dozen+ blackbirds feast on the seed heads of a 5ft x 5ft Fusia bush they just couldn't get them down quick enough A week or so back there was a beautiful light cinnamon coloured blackbird looked in excellent condition really stunning ian
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Post by rowanberry on Nov 15, 2020 10:22:22 GMT
Hi rowenberry your putting up some really nice photos lately When I looked at the EXIF data on flickr I see your using cs2 to process them if you look around I'm sure you'll find a slider that will lighten the shadows up a tad. I'll bring out some extra detail and colour Also looking at the 2 mushrooms I'd go with lilac bonnet but I don't think the other is a stinkhorn just an old stem from some other shroom ian Thanks, Ian! Although these of the chaffinch and nuthatch are Snowlynx's photos... my camera isn't able to zoom in on birds at this distance as well as his does, (or maybe it's just me. Just last week Snowlynx realised that if we pop out the LCD screens on the backs of our cameras and twist them around to an angle, then we can hold the camera close to the ground and get really nice shots of mushrooms without having to actually lay on the ground. We've been running around in the woods looking for photographic fungi ever since! Shame we didn't know this back in October when they were looking their best... hence the rotting 'stinkhorn'.
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Post by aeshna5 on Nov 16, 2020 5:07:20 GMT
Continuing the Blackbird theme I've just received their latest bulletin for the BTO Garden Bird Survey & their lead story is the unusually low numbers of Blackbirds being reported since August in gardens nationally. It did mention a factor might have been the dry spring which could have hampered breeding success or a good fruiting autumn might been birds are foraging in the wider countryside.
Certainly around here the latter doesn't seem to be holding up as numbers are distinctly low. They are continuing to monitor the findings.
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Post by rowanberry on Nov 17, 2020 19:37:43 GMT
That is interesting info about the blackbirds. For several years we had a breeding pair who stayed with us all year round. 'Mrs. Bea' as she came to be known was tame enough that I could go out and call to her and she'd come to the feeding dish... her favourite was red grapes, and she would bypass mealworms in favour of them. We watched her through go all the trials and tribulations of learning where to build her nests, (magpies raided her first attempts, which was heartbreaking to watch... she would get so upset) until after a year or so she became successful and reared several healthy broods. She even sussed out that if the magpies came she could rush up to the house furiously alarm-calling and I would come out and chase them away. Me, she and the magpies had many a set-to for quite a few summers! The males changed several times, but she was with us for a total of five years- the last photo I took of her was in 2017. I still miss her. Ever since she went, we've not had any regular blackbirds- the occasional one will be around for a few days, and I think her fledglings were the ones we saw the following spring after she vanished- but since then, not really had very many at all. I still put apples out in the hopes they will take up residence again, but no luck so far. Mrs Bea 2017 by Wabi Gallery, on Flickr
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Post by ianr on Nov 23, 2020 12:01:28 GMT
Seems this thread become blackbird central so I'll post this here, most of the berries out the back have nearly all gone but were still seeing plenty of blackbirds a dozen + it's hard to say there flying in and out all the time. I'll keep putting food down they've a thing for my robin mix at the moment. Also stopped off at the bank today and their car park has plenty of berries, couldn't count the blackbirds but the bushes had a couple of dozen easily. Constantly on the move. ian
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Post by aeshna5 on Dec 3, 2020 20:18:13 GMT
Update on Blackbirds. I strongly suspected disease may well be a factor in the unusual lack of Blackbirds in the London area, though some wilder areas such as my "local patch" may be holding migrant birds at the moment. After a Facebook chat somebody mentioned a disease affecting them in the Netherlands a couple of years ago. Doing a bit of on-line digging an article by Garden Wildlife Health stated that Usutu virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes had been found in Blackbirds in London for the first time in summer 2020. Birds often lethargic & emaciated. Also one House Sparrow had it. The virus originates in Africa.
It's interesting that after many theories about House Sparrow declines recent science suggested an avian malaria was the cause of population crashes in at least some populations. In Netherlands though Blackbirds are still fairly common, numbers are down about 15%.
Worrying how rapidly these diseases spread through our wildlife.
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