Help or Hindrance?

I just cannot convince myself that my back garden feeder station is of help to the few birds we have in our area.
The local Sparrowhawk has had another successful hit.

Unfortunately this time it was the female Blackbird which I had, in my last post, said was improving nicely after being in poor condition.
After the last Sparrowhawk kill I had restricted table feeding to the front garden where the feeder is almost totally enclosed by twiggy bushes, but restarted the back garden feeder when the weather recently turned poor.
I know that the view is that the kill is what happens in the wild, but I'm now feeling that I was simply tipping the advantage toward the Sparrowhawk by attracting its prey into one predictable area.

More Garden Crew

When the female Blackbird arrived on the scene about eight weeks ago she was in a bit of a state with an almost bald head and few feathers on her breast. She has been very secretive and scarce since then but has gradually got back into a much better condition. She is now seen on a more regular basis at the feeder.
The male regularly sits in the tree in the back garden often singing in the dark and also at other times sings in a very quiet and melodic manner. The bird may only be eight to ten feet away but its song is hardly audible.


Two very welcome guests

Starling Spectacular

Its not until you get in close that you appreciate the striking markings of the Starling.



We are currently getting regular visits, into the garden, from a group of half a dozen. This mornings plan was to get down to St. Mary's Island by about 9.30am but got trapped waiting for the gas engineer to come and restart the boiler. As it happened, I managed to do the boiler business and was then presented with the opportunity to capture these beauties.
So it all worked out fine.

Garden Visitors

Recent garden activity has seen House Sparrow numbers improving with ten on the feeders this morning.

A pitiful total I know, but looking at the few houses which surround us, we can see many of the earlier nesting holes have been blocked up both in the eaves and around waste pipes. The same goes for Starlings which used to regularly use either one of two holes in brickwork which are now cemented up. It was good to see a few Starlings in the garden this morning. They always remind me of hooligan kids.
Currently we are also seeing Blue, Great and Coal Tit, Wren, Goldfinch, Robin, Dunnock, Blackbird, Magpie and Wood Pigeon.

Corkscrew Curlew

Recently watched this Curlew investigating a discarded car tyre in the River Tyne mud.
It was amazing to watch how it turned and twisted to check out the inside of the tyre for grub.
Reminded me of when I used to do something similar when looking for soft shell peeler crab for fishing bait - with my hands - not my eyes.




I was surprised that it was not dizzy after the search

Blue Tit in spring

Its currently proving to be a bit of a struggle to obtain some bird photos with a bit of sun on their backs for the blog. So watching a pair of Blue Tits feeding from a tree in the back garden gave me the idea of spiriting one of them into the near future and a springtime tree.

Killingworth and Rising Sun

A quick march around Killingworth large lake saw two pair of Goosander, Grey Wagtail, Canada and Greylag Geese out on the grass, and many many Tufted Duck, Coot, Black headed Gull, Mallard.

Over to Rising Sun, oh how we could have done with some, it was dark wet and windy.
About ten Pochard on the water and apart from some Tufted Duck, one Shoveler and Heron not a lot else. There was a diving duck near to the reeds at the South end of the main pond which I could not quite get a good enough sight to identify. Might try to get back there at weekend if the light is better.