Garden Birds October & November 2008
October can still be a relatively quiet time for garden birds, as the countryside still has plenty of ripe fruits and berries. These are particularly favoured by Blackbirds and Song Thrushes, so this is why we see few of them in the gardens. However as the fruits are rapidly eaten, both species will start to reappear in your garden, particularly towards the end of November. The number of both these species will be swelled by birds coming across from the continent to escape the colder weather over there. So your friendly garden Blackbird this winter, may just be French!
October is the main migration month. Many of our summer visitors are heading south and will pass over our gardens and will on occasion drop in for some food or a drink in your pond or birdbath. Every year I usually get Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Common Whitethroat drop in for an hour-usually first thing in the morning. They flit around the shrubs and bushes very quickly, looking for insects and then finish off with a bath in the pond. Blackcaps are also an annual visitor, these are our British breeding birds, migrating, not to be confused with the continental Blackcaps that will appear for the winter in our gardens, usually in December. Anything unusual could appear!
In November the first of the winter migrants start to arrive in our gardens. The most obvious of these are the Scandinavian thrushes - Fieldfare and Redwing. They are very shy and only generally come into our gardens when the weather is bad and food is hard to find in the countryside. I have quite a few different berry shrubs in my garden and if they have not been stripped by my local thrushes, the bright orange pyracantha berries and hawthorn are what they prefer. However they also love ripe apples put out on the lawn.
One bird that has reappeared in the garden over the last week or two is the Robin. Having recovered from their long breeding season and recently moulted feathers, the males are once again singing; to proclaim their winter territories. During wet weather Coal Tits have also made an appearance at the feeders - taking black sunflower seeds and hiding them in gaps in the fence!
An important job for these months, is to clean your next boxes out, so that they can be used for roosting during the winter. A weak disinfectant solution will kill any mites .
Lynne Demaine