In an English Country Garden (Part 4, Chapter 1)

In this post I will cover the birds and other wildlife we have attracted into our garden. In the second part of this post (coming soon) I will cover the insect life I have discovered so far.

You will notice that there are no pictures of mammals or amphibians, this is because I have either failed miserably in photographing them or because we do not have them.

We definitely have squirrels (sadly not the native Red Squirrel), field mice, rabbits, the occasional gang of weasels and we think we have hedgehogs - we've seen their poo but not the animal that produced it. Over the next year I intend to build a couple of nesting / hibernation boxes for hedgehogs and to make sure there are enough gaps for them to get in and out of the garden.

We definitely have newts in the bigger pond but absolutely no sign of frogs or toads. I suspect that we have not seen frogs in the pond because they have difficulty accessing it - it is slightly raised and the sides may prevent them accessing it - so before the coming spring I intend to install a couple of ramps so they can get to it. I am slightly baffled by the absence of toads as we have nice, damp sheltered spots that should suit them, this I intend to investigate in the coming year.

Picture: Pied Wagtail (Motacilla alba)

Birds

I have not managed to capture all the birds that visit / have visited our garden since we moved here in 2011 - notably a Heron, Green Woodpecker and a Kingfisher - but I have managed to catch quite a few. Of our regular visitors I'm still trying to get a usable picture of a Jackdaw, Magpie, Crow, Wood Pigeon, Thrush, Starling and Rock Dove so will keep trying ! There are also a number of what I refer to as 'small brown jobs' that I have not captured, either because I've simply overlooked them or because I've not had a clear shot.

The galleries below show a selection of our regular visitors (click on the image to see full size)

From left to right: Pied Wagtail, Gold Finches, Goldfinch, Greenfinch plus House Sparrow (Male), Greenfinch plus Great Tit

From left to right: Collared Doves, Collared Doves, Blackbird, Nuthatch, House Sparrow (Female)

From left to right: Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long-Tailed Tit, Long-Tailed Tit, Robin

From left to right: Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, Swift, Chaffinch, Great Spotted Woodpecker plus a Blue Tit

The next part of this post will cover the insect life I have discovered in the garden so far (I had intended it to be one post but have decided that it would be too long to digest in one gulp).