Success is getting what you want; happiness is liking what you get

Tuesday 30 August 2016

Tweet, tweet, birds in the Garden

What could be sweeter than a song thrush greeting the early morning with a melody?  There he was, perched high on the top of the neighbour’s roof, singing his little heart out.

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Song thrush in the morning

We have a resident blackbird pair too, which make our garden their own.  Every day they busily check out the small bark garden under our kitchen window, looking for bugs and insects to eat.  Flick, flick, the bark goes everywhere!  What a mess they make – all over the path, and we even find pieces of bark several metres away by the table and plant pots.  The male blackbird must have recently been in a tussle with a predator, as he hops around on his one remaining leg now.

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Mess made by the blackbirds

Plenty of sparrows come visiting too, and they all go crazy when I hang out the seed container.  They are such messy eaters, and plenty of seed gets dropped onto the lawn.  That suits the rest of the flock – while a couple hang on to the feeder, the rest are happily picking up the dropped seed from underneath.

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Sparrows under the seed container

The thrushes, blackbirds and sparrows have all been introduced to New Zealand by the early settlers.  A couple of native species come calling too – Wax eyes and Greenfinches, both about the size of sparrows.  The native birds are particularly food of fruit, I give them apples, oranges, and mandarins.  They rather like the fat balls that I make and pack inside a coconut shell, chock full of added seeds and raisins.  Yum, yum, birdy pudding!

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Birds having fun

2 comments:

Janice said...

We get similar,birds here too. The blackbirds certainly can make a mess. We have silver eyes, which appear to be similar to your wax eyes

Marilyn, nb Waka Huia said...

There's a lot of birds around in Waikanae too, Jenny, and don't they and their singing make a home feel lovely and peaceful? Tui are particularly plentiful which is just wonderful. Had a couple of pink and yellow budgie-like birds in the magnolia the other day - do you know what they are? Slightly bigger than a budgie and quite squawky which is what made me look out the window for the source of the unusual sound.

I really like your coconut shell idea - did Robin make that? We find the blackbirds do the same thing with the mulch on our gardens down the drive and outr the back. The sparrows tend to dig about in the dirt that is un-mulched and create a mess. But I would rather have the birds with the mess than no birds!

Big hugs, M