We arrived in our new home this month, so excited to be out in the countryside with great views and the chance of seeing more and maybe different birds than we were used to seeing in our previous urban home. We were not to be disappointed.
Our first regular visitors were Pied Wagtails, pretty tame too, wandering around on the patio outside the kitchen, lovely to watch. I'd guess this is a pair and have been coming here for a while.
One of my hopes for our new home was to see Yellowhammers, I wasn't disappointed!
We soon realised there were Yellowhammers everywhere, not strictly in the garden but on the back fence and in the field beyond, wonderful.
Reed Bunting also appeared in the field, one the fence and, I soon discovered, in the hedge on the side of the garden.
The Pied Wagtail were everywhere, only the two, as far as I could tell but, still quite tame and accessible for me and the camera.
Another bird I'd really been hoping for was the Tree Sparrow, I think I saw one when I lived in N Yorkshire but certainly never saw any in urban S Wales. Lo and behold, that hedge I mentioned above had all sorts living in it, including Tree Sparrows.
Until this point, I had been spotting the birds in the field behind the house but, as Spring moved into Summer and the weather improved, they started appearing closer to hand, in the garden itself. The front of the house has four Ash trees one of which is right outside my window, I can sit here at the Mac with a tripod set up beside me and get pretty good close shots of many birds.
Turned out that hedge has a large colony of Chaffinches living in it and they became the most numerous and frequent visitors to the feeders I put up.
I started putting dishes out with mealworms and sunflower hearts to see what might be drawn to my window. There were Chaffinches, Pied Wagtails, Tree Sparrows and then Siskin! The Siskin first appeared right on the patio outside the kitchen, so close.
The whole of April and on, was like a birding safari, so many just kept turning up and in many cases I didn't even need to leave my seat to watch them. So, we hadn't been here a whole month yet and my birding list had changed quite drastically. I was starting to see a difference between a rural and urban garden, as well as between S Wales and
There was lots more to come and, as we ventured out into the surrounding area, some real special sightings.
