Twitchers! - anyone want to talk birds?

[Ingles2]

I'm hoping I'm not alone here with my obsession and constant watching of garden birds..
I got a bird box with a camera for Xmas (best present ever) and I'm watching constantly.. I'm lucky in that I have a large Rural garden and have plenty of visitors..
Any else checking their bird table or box constantly? what do you see regularly?

we have -
-blackbirds ( female named Marjory because her wing droops)

-occasional song thrush- but very shy and blackbird chases them

-dunnocks- one called Peggy because she only has one foot

-robin
-wren
-blue tits
-great tits
-long tailed tits (in winter only for some reason)
-sparrows
-collared doves
-stock pigeons
-crows
-a pair of magpies
-starlings ( the 'squabbling gobbling goblins' - spring and summer when they bring their babies to scoff all before them!)
-about every 6 weeks or so we get a sparrowhawk strike
-on a chimney pot across our back-to back gardens a few doors down, we've seen a pair of herring gulls nest for the past 2 years - man! what a racket! the crows seem to be bothering them though this year
-in recent storms we had a water rail and redwing which we think were blown off course, never seen them since

we're in the flight-path of geese , who pass overhead every morning and evening to and from their feeding grounds- a fabulous sight and sound

-goldfinches who pass by and briefly rest in the trees in our back to back neighbours' garden- they dont come into ours even though we put feed to tempt them :(

constant joy to watch them

I miss hummers... if there was just one more interesting non-native species that could be introduced to Britain...

I can't match the variety above in gardens, not least because until recently I had quite a prolific killing cat, but... cycling in nearby countryside I often see buzzards, magpies, pheasants, jays, flocks of noisy geese, seagulls digging thru the newly tilled soil, crows (maybe bombing the buzzards), barn owls, kestrals, more pheasants, other small hunting birds not sure which ones... and the odd seemingly feral chicken. The skylarks started singing end of January this year. Occasional murmuration. I saw a red kite about 5 miles from home about 5 years ago, but not since.

Buzzards especially are very much more common now than even 4 years ago.

It's the first thing I do of a morning...feed the birds. My desks faces the feeding areas and I watch them while I work. Rural town setting here. Blackbirds, starlings, sparrows, blue tits, great tits, wren, chaffinches, goldfinches, pigeons, magpies, red kites circling...

But my favourite...a Robin that will eat mealworms from your hand.

Recently tried live food and the birds loved it, but it was fiddly to serve.

We love watching the birds in the garden - we have lots of feeders. We're urban, but on the edge of lots of military land. For the RSPB garden watch we recorded 15 species in the hour.

The one I've been enjoying this year is a nightingale that has been hanging around (and waking us up) for some weeks now. Apparently they don't arrive in the UK until April - but nobody told this guy! Funnily enough I'd never heard a nightingale in the wild before until a couple of years ago we heard one in a local arboretum, then one turned up in our local wood, and now we have had them in the garden the last 2 years.

Not in my garden but have seen a 2nd set of goslings in the local park already and swans are building their nests I will be visiting them almost daily in the next few weeks.

We do get goldfinches eating lavender seeds in the garden.

good morning... lovely to see so many fellow twitchers. Day off today so Im sitting with my coffee watching the feeder.. busy out there again :)
amazing to read about hummingbirds and bald eagles with my breakfast! :)
so who has nesting birds? it all seems pretty busy out there today.

We had a Robin busily building a next for a couple of weeks but not seen her recently in there.

I was informed by DD that a bluetit spent ages looking into another nesting box. Not made her mind up though.

We've learnt, in our garden, the Robin is the boss over the blue tits and dunocks.

I have new residents, great tits moved into one of my bird boxes. Only slight issue is a predatory seagull is hanging out on the garage roof currently.

@SpringisSpinning

Look out in Aldi, they sometimes have the camera kits

Thanks, anyone know whose selling cheap bird boxes

Ohhh.... I am new to this and grew up outside the UK so my identification can be a bit wayward. I do have lots of birds visiting so there is plenty to practice on (Rural, edge of moorland, edge of a village location)

we regularly get
Jackdaws (in the chimney)
Robins
Blue tits
Great tit (I think)
heron
lapwings
grouse (red & black)
curlew
blackbirds
magpies
wood pigeon (every sodding year in the neighbours conifer...)
Barn Owl ... it is a cheeky sod, flying up behind me when I ride my bike or go running and zipping over my head. It scares the living daylights out of me.
Dippers
pheasants
Ducks
peacocks /hens
moorhens
We get a lot of brown birds that I can't tell apart.
Quite a few raptors - I will get better at remembering the different types.
Rarely we get a visit from the Red Kites
Woodcocks
and I have heard a night jar and a cuckoo but not seen them.

It livens up the daily shall we go for a walk then.....

We had this fella running round our garden this morning!

Town centre garden.

Sparrows.
Coal tits.
Blackbirds.
Pigeons and magpies.
Up to three red kites overhead most days.
And I can hear an owl on warm evenings.

I'm rural too, outside York. I have a very regular couple of great spotted woodpeckers who love the fatballs and push anything else away from them, male and female sparrowhawks, 1 lovely little pied wagtail who landed here during the snow and now keeps returning, tonnes of sparrows, lots of blue/great/coal tits, chaffinch, green finch, gold finch, blackbirds, the odd treecreeper and nuthatch, robins, dunnocks and a few wrens.
Also lots of pheasants! including a Chinese pheasant who is gorgeous!
I spend so much on birdseed and fatballs etc :-D worth it though.
I'm hoping to move to the village soon though and will miss all this.

Owls too, rarely see them but hear them regularly

so who has nesting birds?
I do, i have 3 nest boxes in a maple tree, the sparrows start them off but the blue tits seem to evict them, they are in and out a lot right now.
I need a box with a camera :-D

Does anyone have an issue with crows and rooks ? They have my heart broken , they swoop down and manage to shake the birdfeeders enough to spill food on the ground and then eat it all. I really like them .. they are very clever and innovational but I feel they are big enough to find their own food and leave the feeders for the little birds....any ideas to keep them away? We have tried everything tbh but would love more suggestions from anyone else who has overcome this problem..

@FGSWhatNow dunnocks have similar markings to a sparrow on their back but have grey chests

We moved to our house 3 years ago, we are close to a canal and woodland and having come from a really urban garden where we literally got NO birds I am amazed at how many come to my feeders/garden here

Dunnocks
Blue, great, coal & long tailed tits
Robins
Nuthatches
Pair of thrush
Blackbirds
Greater spotted woodpecker
Treecreeper
Starlings once in a while
Gold finches
Bull finches used to but haven't seen them for a couple of years
Chaffinches
Collared doves
Wrens
Heron but not in garden just flying over
Same with geese

We're same as a previous poster, we don't get any sparrows 🤷🏻‍♀️

I have seen but not for a while
Brambling
Black cap
Gold crest
Redwings (haven't seen at all this winter)
Pheasant (male only)

Heard but not seen
Tawny owl
Little owl

I saw this nesting box in a garden today. I want one.

When I get elderly (not so far away) I will ask for a new and interesting theme nest box every year for birthday-Xmas-Mother's day (maybe).

There's a village I regularly go to that has a pond with house in it for moorhens: the birds raised THREE broods last year. Can't wait for them to get started again in 2021.

Nothing in the skies more exciting than micro-lites today.

what a cute bird box @lljkk
talking of bird boxes, mine is from garden nature.co.uk and I think the quality is pretty good...
here's my blue tit today, still in the box, still not nesting... don't know what's she's doing, but she's still entertaining me while I should be working :D

We went for a walk yesterday evening & were rewarded with a sparrow hawk and a falcon of some sort ( because of where we are most likely a peregrine)

We also saw a mountain hare, just losing his white coat.

Re Crows ( we have jackdaws) I love them. Our chimney has been their nesting spot for several years now. They are so smart - they fledge the chicks off the edge of our roof, but only when they have checked if someone is in by tapping on the windows. They know if we are watching we will put the chicks back on the roof when they don't make it.

We have lots of finches (Gold, chaffinch, occasional bull/green) and tits (blue, long tailed, great, coal) when we keep the feeders stocked but have scaled back recently as think we have a resident rat... Have lots of red kites round here so they are often wheeling round, more common than the buzzards these days. Recently had a funny long tailed tit (think one of a pair) who is very distracting as it keeps flying from a nearby apple tree, to my window and back again, sometimes tapping on the window. Guess it's looking for small bugs at the window but never seen L-T tits doing that before! Carries on in short bursts all day!

Yay, my bird nerd people!
I’ve used the extra home and garden based time over the past year to get my five year old into birds and he is now obsessed this week we’ve had goldfinches, wood pigeons, starlings, great tits, bluetits, robins, sparrows and goldcrests in the garden. And we spotted a sparrowhawk a few streets away which caused great excitement (perhaps me even more than DS...)

I can’t wait for the house martins, swifts and swallows to return. We have loads nesting in the eaves of the houses in our street and it’s a true sign of summer evenings for me.

I’m also excited for Springwatch this year - total comfort telly!

Ahhh a fellow knitter as well! Birds, knitting and gin and that’s me set up for the weekend
@Wildlynx we have long tailed tits doing the same thing.. they are looking for spiders web for their nests and those sacs with eggs in (grim) my house is weatherboard so they spend hours doing this.. plenty of nooks and crannies

In bird cam news... moss has appeared in the box! Looks like we’re getting a nest..