I am absolutely amazed at the number of bird species that are now regularly visiting my garden. Today saw the second new species of the year so far – the Siskin. It is following in the footsteps of the Blackcap which arrived on 1st January.

Why is it always when you are not looking for something it appears right under your nose? I wonder how often we have unseen visitors in our gardens – not just birds but toads, hedgehogs and others too. Most of the time we will miss seeing them as we are simply not looking!

Blackcap update –I now have to report that today, as I was watching my new arrivals the Siskins, I noticed there were two Blackcap males – one at the table and the other in the fat cake cage. This again is a first, until now I had only seen one. My daughter also spotted two Coal Tits on one of our small pine trees the other day – with their speed they are very difficult to spot and again we have only ever seen one of them.

Numbers increasing too – so it is not only the species that are increasing! I really must try to count the Chaffinches that visit now they have definitely exceeded 12 – at a guess I’d say we have doubled that! I have been thinking that I will do another bird count perhaps on the last weekend of February for comparison to our count for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2007, taken on January 27th.

My garden now has regularly visits from:
Blackbirds, Robins, Dunnocks, Wrens,
House Sparrows,
Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits,
Greenfinches, Goldfinches, Chaffinches,
Starlings, Woodpigeons

My garden has had recent visits from:
Blackcap males
Siskin male and female

If you would like to see videos of the birds that visit my garden – click on the link below MY VIDEOS at the top of the left column where you will see further links direct to all videos published in previous posts.