Is it me or are the birds behaving strangely?

[username108]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but the birds seem to be much more tame and less afraid. When I went for my daily walk yesterday, there were a few blackbirds in my path that didn't seem that bothered i was there- when normally they would fly off or move a fair distance. They also seem to be singing and fighting a lot more. It's fucking weird. It all feels like Alfred Hitchcock's 'the birds'.

I read that human activity like mobile phones and noises were disrupting the birds. Now we have less people on the streets it’s probably changing their behaviour again.

We always have loads of birds because we put out sunflower hearts which they love. We have noticed lots of jackdaws in the past few weeks...they pick up whole fatballs and fly off with them!

All the birds in my garden are raising chicks, there is a nest in the tree. Everytime my 19 year old cat goes out she gets bombarded by the parents poor love. She's never caught a bird in her life.
She is intimidated by them
There are a lot of very young birds around flying for the first time and a lot of them don't seem to have survival instinct yet, one of them came right up to the cat who was lying in the sun, the cat looked at it and chattered but was otherwise disinterested.
The little ones are quite tame, they will learn.

Loads of birds here too. Outside my window there is a queue of goldfinches waiting to take their turn at the bird-feeder. We always have pheasants close by as we are at the edge of our hamlet with farmland beyond and there is a pair we see most days. Unusually we have had a pair of mallards taking up part-time residence. They are very tame and happy to let us get quite close and wander past them.

We live under one of the flight-paths out of the SE airports towards the trans-Atlantic routes. We also have two N-S flightpaths passing close by too so anything going from Scotland, Liverpool, Manchester or Newcastle to Spain, Canaries or Portugal goes over. There is hardly any air traffic at all now so the sound of bird-song is more obvious. Normal traffic is also much reduced. I find watching the birds very calming - just waiting for the 2nd wave of house martins to return.

they pick up whole fatballs and fly off with them!

Fat balls really need to be in a rat-proof feeder.

Starling and Ravens are also excellent mimics.
Ravens can learn to copy speech really well and will even pick up accents. This is an African white chested raven with a Yorkshire accent.

www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/44809325

It would be more remarkable if they didn't use the local accent!

True

Apparently one of the Ravens in the Tower of London has been known to tell schoolchildren to bugger off when she is not nicking their Pringles.

I love birds and feed them all year round so I do routinely notice them. They have definitely been noisier in our garden to the point that I looked for nests. I had put it down to developers having cut down a lot of mature trees locally so birds have had to relocate to the trees left standing but maybe it is a byproduct of the lockdown.

No, just the same as usual here. We always have lots of birds though. We have a pheasant visiting every day but we have loads nearby I think he has just got separated from the others and cleans up dropped chicken feed.
We do have an owl which has moved into the village though I haven’t seen it yet but it is very noisy. I left my window open last week and it woke me up.

We have seen a deer on our walk sauntering across the road. Otherwise life as normal bar the fact everyone is out walking and people that are not villagers are getting a second look.

The seagulls have probably come inland because there are no kids with ice creams to mug, at the seaside.

Saw a crow at our bus stop in a pinstripe suit with brolly and bowler.

Bit strange on a bank holiday.

Its spring - the mating season.

Theres alot less other stuff going on - traffic, people, noise etc so you notice what is going on more.

We're not that far from a motorway around a mile or so, theres a distinctive background "hum", its not there anymore just very quiet thats probally we notice the birds more?.

It's usually busy in our garden at this time of year, and the usual pairs of birds are back, but it's noticeable there are many more seagulls than usual passing overhead and they're in bigger groups and hanging around for longer. Also for the first time in twenty years I'm seeing birds of prey directly around the garden. A kestrel has been hunting the songbirds and a red kite has been directly overhead a few times. Usually they're a few miles out over the country roads and around the motorways. I wonder if with less traffic there's less roadkill than usual and they're having to hunt further afield.

We have fish in the pond out the back and I was just saying last night that they were acting very odd. I can’t think of any way their environment would have even changed!

Foxes will go back to eating rats and mice once the easy option of fried chicken isn't everywhere.

Shitehawks come inland when the weather is going to be crap - particularly where I am, because the prevailing wind is changing to the East - and when they want to nest/feed. The absence of schoolchildren abandoning food on school fields and easy pickings on the seafront mean they are having to look elsewhere, which usually means landfill sites and returning to their natural behaviour of mugging smaller sea birds.

I think the Corvids are curious. They've noticed we're behaving differently and, being incredibly intelligent creatures, they're having a look at what we're up to.

The smaller things, well, they can hear themselves, so rather than only making a noise in the very early hours or, in the case of Thrushes, Robins and Wrens, in the middle of the night, they're making noise later in the morning. And we're at home to hear them.

All perfectly natural.

I'll really miss everything when the world goes back to how it was.

We have fish in the pond out the back and I was just saying last night that they were acting very odd. I can’t think of any way their environment would have even changed!

The water may be warmer than is usual for the time of year, though I don't know if that would have any effect on them.

Fish changing their behaviour would be spawning, by the way. Lots of getting into the shallows and being flashy - that's why a Coarse Fishing Licence has a close season of 15 March to 15 June every year; to allow them to spawn.

The birds round here are having the time of their lives.
I’ve been driving home at night and sadly noticed more dead badgers too and the past two nights luckily avoided hitting two.
We have a night singer which I suspect is a song thrush ❤️

Never mind the birds, it's the giant 5g-enhanced super-spiders we need to be watching out for...

it's the giant 5g-enhanced super-spiders we need to be watching out for

What I’m reading is we’re going to get an army of Spider-Man’s.... c/d?

I managed to get this picture of what I think is a Rook (happy to be corrected) which was happily following me up the street. Think they're not usually seen it cities either?

Are people keeping their cats indoors more ?

That may have an effect on birds .

My DS (who discovers some weird stuff on YouTube) keeps telling me that foxes will come into houses now partly with the doors being open and the fast food resturants being closed so less waste .
There's still shredded bins round here so there's a fair few still managing to get a meal .