Blackbirds and Woodpeckers rule - news from Marks Mansion gardens over the last four days

I've been staying at Mum's house the last few nights. Her treatment has side effects which are now making trying to sleep, and stay asleep, very uncomfortable. So as well as being fatigued anyway during the day, now she's even more tired and still having to cope with the rest of the side effects on top of that. I'm not much help really, I pop to the shops, wash up and do general household chores. Occasionally Mum even lets me boil an egg, but cooking is still primarily her 'baby' and luckily, despite all the other side effects, losing her appetite hasn't been one of them. She's back in hospital next week for her last session of intense 24/7 chemo so at least she'll have nurses on hand should her uncomfortable nights continue.

 

Whilst she's been resting or sleeping in, I've either been in the conservatory at the top of the garden, or in my hide at the bottom. The garden is still very much a hive of activity. So here are loads of photos and the continuing saga of the soap opera goings on in Marks Mansion gardens.

 

Juvenile birds are appearing everywhere.

The House Sparrows look like they've had a very successful breeding year.....

 

 

Collared Dove adults and juveniles have been visiting.....

 

Our first juvenile Goldfinch of the year was spotted in one of the shrubs......

 

The next door neighbours have always had a large population of Greenfinches, but Mum's garden rarely gets them. However this lovely little juvenile Greenfinch stayed for an hour.......

 

and of course juvenile Starlings are plentiful....

 

 

Adult birds visiting include this regular Great Tit with it's ringed leg....

 

 

Goldfinches.....

 

A pair of Jays have started visiting the garden too. One has a leg ring, which I've been unable to read yet. This is him/her below during a particularly heavy rain fall.......

 

A pair of Dunnocks are also regular visitors and normally skulk under the shrubs.....

 

The feeder by one of the conservatory doors has been very popular with a pair of Blue Tits, even when I've had the doors open.....

 

 

One of the stars of the garden are Mr and Mrs BB, who have built a nest within an unused wicker wall hanging basket just feet away from the conservatory. On Monday they hatched all five of their eggs, and Mr BB has been incredibly busy ever since. He really is 'Super Dad'. Come rain or shine, he has been busy collecting great beak fulls of food for his nestlings, and seeing off any large predators. Mrs BB has also been doing her bit, but her beak fulls of food are quite tiny in comparison, and the only birds she sees off are the occasional nosey (and noisy) juvenile Starling that gets a bit too close to the nest.  

 

 

 

 

Mr BB has taken an intense dislike to the visiting Jays, even though the Jays mainly visit the bottom of the garden nicking the Woodpeckers nuts. Below I just managed to grab an action shot of Mr BB as he whizzed threateningly past a Jay.

 

 

and this is what Mr BB is protecting. His nestlings. Here are two of them (beak shots only I'm afraid) who were just visible after both Mr and Mrs BB had left the nest.

 

 

The second stars of the garden are the Great Spotted Woodpeckers. If you follow my blog, you'll know we have two males (Bill and Ben) and a female (Jen) who have been visiting the nut feeder at the bottom of the garden. Well we may have a fourth bird visiting too, but both times when I became aware of it, I was too late with both my bins and my camera, to get a better look. It's definitely an adult bird, and not a juvenile, and I think it's another male. Ben and Jen are the most prolific visitors. In the last four days I've seen both of them regularly during the day, and they are a couple. Bill, the male with the deformed beak, has only visited a couple of times, both of which were when it was raining and I didn't have my camera to hand. So all of the photos below are of Ben and Jen.

 

I finally managed a close up photo of Jen. She is still very wary of us human beans, and I got the shot whilst in my hide. She somehow sensed there was something a miss though and these were the only two close up pics I managed. 

 

However if I stay in the conservatory she is happy to come down, take a nut from the feeder, carry it round to the back of the trunk and deposit it into the little nook that all three Woodpeckers have been using (much to the delight of the juvenile House Sparrows who have discovered this stash).

 

She is not at all tolerant of any other birds when she's on the trunk and feeder. Woe betide any Starling that tries to land whilst she's busy........

 

 

Ben, on the other hand, is very tolerant.........

 

And usually as Ben lands, Jen takes off......

 

 

If a Jackdaw landed on the trunk while Jen was feeding, she'd soon be off, but Ben is much more laid back and just sits it out quietly.........

 

 

All three birds (Bill, Ben and Jen) use the pergola to perch on before flying to their nut feeder. Whether I'm at the top or bottom of the garden, I can see them do this. Ben was so laid back early this morning that even though I was having my morning coffee and a fag out in the open (not within my hide), he still perched on the pergola, had a look round and proceeded to the feeder to continue his business of putting nuts in the nook. I was no more than seven feet away from the trunk, and it wasn't until I lifted my coffee mug did Ben see me and fly off.

 

Jen is so much more secretive. She'll even hide behind the feeder if Mr BB is making his usual dash up the centre of the garden to feed his chicks......

 

I'm really looking forward to the day Ben and Jen bring their juveniles to the garden for a visit.

 

Elsewhere the Starling youngsters are growing up fast and squabbling not only with their siblings, but also with the adults too.....

 

 

The teenage Starling below has discovered the Woodpeckers nut nook.....

 

 

Last but not least, Mum and I thought the rats had gone. There'd been no sightings for two days, then yesterday evening as I was getting ready to close up the conservatory and join Mum in the front room, I spotted this cheeky little bugger climbing up the nut feeder tree....

 

 

Ben, Jen and some cheeky House Sparrows - another instalment of the Marks Mansion soap opera

I hadn't intended spending time in my hide at Marks Mansion today. The weather forecast said it was going to rain. However after a few hours at the hospital this morning and a lunch out, Mum wanted to do some 'horizontal' resting, so I decided to sit in my hide until the rain came. Except it never did and I ended up sitting in the hide until it was time to go back up the hospital for Mums radiotherapy.

 

Ben, one of the male Great Spotted Woodpeckers, kept me entertained. He really is a creature of habit. Always flies in from the same direction, always perches on the pergola first, always removes one nut at a time from the feeder, and always rams it into the same nook in the trunk. 

 

 

 

 

What he doesn't know is I'm not the only one observing him. A few of the older juvenile House Sparrows are watching him too, and as soon as Ben flies off, they fly in.

 

 

 

So Ben is not only feeding himself (and possibly his own young - I have seen him take bits of nut away too), but he's also feeding the resident House Sparrows. Well done Ben.

 

 

His partner, Jen, is not so obliging. I am now 100% certain they are partners. Several times today they were in the garden at the same time. She is incredibly skittish, not like Ben who even comes down to the feeder when we're at the top of the garden. The photo of Ben above was taken from my hide just 7 feet away from him.

 

Jen is also a creature of habit but its taken me until today to exactly discover her habits. She always flies into the garden from the same direction, she always lands on the pergola and then, or so I thought, she always flies off. But she doesn't ! Where my hide had been positioned, the view of the feeders outside the conservatory had been obscured. But that's where Jen has been feeding. So in the end I moved my hide so I could see her more clearly.

 

 

She is so close to the conservatory, and so nervous, that we have never seen her feed on the nuts there from the conservatory itself. Mum says she has often walked into the conservatory and accidently scared her off. Funny thing is only yesterday I'd emptied the nuts from that feeder into Ben's feeder as I didn't think it was being used. Now we've topped up Jen's feeder too. She also has her own 'tree' where she is storing her nuts, though its well concealed by plants so I don't know if I'll manage to get any photos later. There's a well established Lilac to the right of the photo above, and I watched Jen several times this afternoon stashing her nuts very low down on the trunk of the shrub.

 

Other news from the gardens at Marks Mansion. Mr and Mrs BB are being lovingly attentive to their new brood of chicks. Mum and I risked one quick glance into the nest this afternoon, still four tiny chicks and one unhatched egg.

 

I could see from my hide a lot of birds flying towards the stream, but there's no vantage point from that angle. Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, House Sparrows, Starlings, Dunnock, Robin, Mr BB and Mrs BB were all seen to drop down. Maybe next week whilst Mum's back in hospital, I'll move the hide back to where I can get a good view of the stream.

An announcement from the gardens of 'Marks Mansion'

Mrs Pat Marks and Miss Wendy Marks, would like to announce the birth of Mr and Mrs BBs baby chicks in the gardens of Marks Mansion (formerly known as Mum's garden)

 

 

Now that 'tongue-in-cheek' royal announcement has been made, I can tell you what we know so far. This morning Mum and I noticed Mrs BB fidgeting on her nest. Mr BB was seen to bring in some food, and that wasn't unusual as he has been feeding her occasionally on the nest, but this time we could see Mrs BB at the back of the nest and Mr BB with his head down at the front of the nest. This happened several times. We had to wait quite a while for both parents to leave the nest, but when they did I shot round and peered in. At least three tiny chicks so far, possibly four. Mum also had a very quick peek in and she confirms she definitely saw an unhatched egg still, but we could both see broken egg shells in the nest too. Mrs BB laid five eggs in total. Neither of us wanted to hang around and look more carefully, and the rest of the day we were very careful to keep out of the way if we saw Mr BB coming in with food.

 

So great news from Marks Mansion for our resident Blackbirds.

 

On to the visiting Great Spotted Woodpeckers. After my blog posts over the last week, we can now confirm we have three visiting birds. Two males and a female. So let me introduce them to you.......

 

This is Bill, the male with the deformed beak.

 

This is Ben. The second male with a perfect beak and confiding nature.

 

and this is Jen, the female. She is incredibly skittish and looking a bit ruffled and worn. This is the best photo I've managed of her so far. She rarely makes it on to the nut feeder as even Mr BB flying through the garden is enough to spook her.

Today I spent 90 minutes in the hide in the morning and 45 minutes in the hide this afternoon. During both sittings I didn't see Bill once, but Ben was very active. Jen came down three times, but every time she only made it as far as the pergola before something spooked her and she'd take off.

 

Ben made the same entrance every time. He came in from the direction of the neighbours garden, would perch on top of the pergola then fly down to the nuts. From there he would extract one, clamber round to the trunk the nut feeder is hanging from, put the nut in the hole, then fly off. He repeated this five times during my mornings observation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

However on the sixth and seventh visit this morning, he made the same entrance but after selecting his nut, he took off back towards the neighbours garden. During my afternoon observations he repeated the same process four more times.

 

 

 

The nut feeder and tree were also visited by a handsome Jay....

 

 

A Blue Tit hoovered up any crumbs......

 

 

And one of the rats tried its luck at being a woodpecker (and failed)....

 

Elsewhere in the garden the usual Red Kites, Swifts and House Martins were going over, plus this Sparrowhawk. This is the third time I've seen a Sprawk around Mum's garden, sorry I mean Marks Mansion, and I doubt it will be the last.