Variety is the Spice of Life

They say that variety is the spice of life, then as far as bird species visiting the hatchery feeding area life must be spicey indeed.

Over the last two days the following species have been seen feeding

Blackbirds Robins Mallard Ducks Great Spotted Woodpecker Yellow Hammer Wren Rook

House Sparrows Greenfinches Chaffinches Dunnocks Pheasant Carrion Crow Goldfinch

Wood Pigeons Pied Wagtail Coal Tits Great Tits Blue Tits.

Also seen within the hatchery grounds were Fieldfares Redwings Heron Tufted Ducks

Teal Ducks Magpies and a Sparrow Hawk.

On other occasions we have had Bramblings Long Tailed Tits Starlings Jackdaw Black Headed Gulls and

often seen flying above the hatchery are Buzzards with the occasional sighting of a Peregrine Falcon

In some cases the individual species numbers can be quite high. Chaffinches being the highest number recorded to date, last year 104 were counted at one time.

Today we counted 84 peanuts being taken away by Blue Tits in a 30 minute period, given the fact these the birds had been feeding since 0800hrs and that the observations were carried out between 1410 hrs and 1440 hrs we feel that this is an exceptional amount of visits from this particular species. We carried out the same observation time in relation to Great Tit Visits and the result was that there had been 38 visits in the same time period.
Perhaps some keen ornithologist out there can make some sense of these numbers. We will carry out a similar count tomorrow as soon as feeders have been loaded to see if there is an increase in frequency of visits or decrease.