European Gardening: BIRDS IN THE GARDEN, 1 by wallaby1

wallaby1 wrote:
Patt it was cold here too, I couldn't go out for 5 minutes and really got chilled. The thermometer on the lawn read 32F, or 0C freezing! I did go out to get the budgie some chick weed and ended up doing a bit of cleaning up and rose pruning, once I did something it wasn't too bad, but I think it was still. It felt good to get something done, when February comes you can usually say the temps have changed just a little, yes DOWN.

We have all of those birds but I am not familiar with siskins, don't often see the chaffinches and greenfinches, but I'm sure they are around, I just need to entice them! The guy across the road said he had counted well over 40 species of birds, he has a paddock behind and then woods, that is where we get nice sunsets this time of year and I always curse the house, trees and cables in the way!
A greenfinch once ran into our large front window and died, its partner was there looking and waiting for it, so sad. We have the occasional pigeon run into the greenhouse too, just about every year one hits a house window, some die, they hit it with force and break their necks. I think the trees and sky reflect into them and they think they can go through.

Have plenty of blackbirds, one year a female used to come to within a couple of feet of me when I was cleaning up border edges, waiting for worms. They feed their young with left over cat food at the back of the house, so they probably weren't scared. It's the magpyes we get every year that I dislike, looking for young birds. I counted 5 in our back garden one year.
We always have crows nesting in the chimney pots, they used to use the unused one from the bedroom, our neighbour had her firplace taken out and chimney capped, they also put an old concrete slab on that one ( she is strange, blames us for everything!). I thought she was doing us a favour, now I know it was because she thought it would make her place damp. it was our fault when her oil boiler made a smell (poss atomising), the coal man got some differenet very gassy coal, it built up gases and we had a chimney fire. She had her smell when she came home and put on her heating after about 2 hours (she lives at her parents mostly), but she jumped on the opportunity to blame us. I could tell a very funny story about how she said the smoke was going up our chimney, turning to gas and going down hers! it was very distressing though, she had a rogue builder/chimney man tell us we needed to put in a liner at £1400, had the environment agency to monitor a smoke test that she 'didn't mind paying for us'. Days after we hadn't had a fire and she still said it was 'lingering' and her lungs were sensitive to the smell. Smoke test was negative, she still said it was us (the heat of a fire seals up the crack!) and we would pay for her chimney work to put in air vents. Strange thing was we didn't have a smell. It was like a comedy of errors, i just told her in the end she was a fire risk, she had two neighbours, and she had better sort it. That was last March and I haven't spoken to her since. She now comes and goes like a ghost, I strut around like a peacock! That's the last time she will trouble me, she has always been trying to tell me what I should do, what I can and can't do in my front garden, monitoring the width of the road which is ours and she uses! Haha, and their sewage drains run through our property as shared pipes, we are the ones that keep them clean, considering shoving a dead hedgehog up hers! Anyway, now that I've had a good grumble, yes it is nice but the neighbour undesirable, and now the crows nest in our main chimney. We thought the nest was just resting on the bar at the top, but it was full of twigs all the way to the bottom and took hours to get out! Then we put a wire cage on it as they were still going in when we had fires just at night. Within 3 days of full time fires the wire cage was completely clogged with soot, so had to take it off. I recently complained in a nice way to the coal man, the coal is cleaner now but still not as good as we had. And we will have to put a cage on again before the crows come back in spring.

I do have a digital camera, and have taken some good pics through the window, but one I tried out the back once to get a bull finch on the boysenberry (dried berries) was murky, and the Jay was at an angle so thought it might reflect. It is double glazing too. I have a Sony DSCV1, it has infra red and sends out the rays automatically on dark objects, also takes perfect pictures in complete darkness. It just reads the object, flashes and presto! It has a thread for adding lens, might do that at some stage. I haven't heard of ordinary cameras using infra red. i do hang out of the window upstairs to get sunsets, I can also get some through the hinge gap, have to remember to put the strap around my wrist, it is a low window and I put one foot on the outside ledge, one inside. Shame if I fall off!

A snow pic through our front window in December