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Blue tit

I haven't been posting enough pictures of the birds in the back garden lately so I thought I should today.

Great tit

The mixed tit flock is usually a few blue tits (I think there's five about but I only see three or four at a time), a pair or two of great tits and one or other of the pair of coal tits though today they were both rummaging about in the dog roses. The cat and I have learned to ignore the tapping noises as the blue tits pick spiders off the windowpane. Every so often the long-tailed tits will barrel in unannounced, generally when the fat balls in the feeder are close to disintegration after the attentions of the spadgers. The coal tits are the least shy of the birds in the garden, sometimes hovering by my shoulder as I fill the feeders, but at the first hint of the camera they're off like a shot. The blue tits, on the other hand, come to the window and pose.

Blue tit

Blue tit

The magpies and blackbirds have done for most of the rowan berries now though they keep going in there to see if there are any they've missed. For some reason all of the birds in my garden choose to ignore the berries on the Pyracantha until late Spring when there's nothing else left anywhere.

I had hoped that pruning back the Mahonia may have removed all the wood that had been got at by a fungal infection but it looks like I was wildly optimistic and I'll have to remove the remains. There's a big gap in that border now — I removed a hazel bush last Winter — and I'm not sure what I want to do with it. I'll get a better idea after leaf fall, there's a lot of chopping back to do and I think I'll have to get someone in before Network Rail's sycamores envelop the whole garden. I really want something that'll provide nectar in Winter, partly for the insects but also for the birds: tits and warblers aren't averse to a sugar rush on a cold day.

Blue tit