Topic: Winter Bird Watching, what have you seen today?

[ceres]

I've always thought parakeets were always a tropical bird. Will these survive your winterfreeze?

They are tropical but they've been surviving the freeze here for nearly 40 years!  There are a lot of stories as to how they came to be here, the most popular is that they escaped from a film set at Shepperton Studios during the filming of the African Queen.  There are over 30,000 of them now mostly in the south-east UK.  The biggest roost is at Esher Rugby Club, a couple of miles from here, where around 7,000 birds spend the winter.  They compete with starlings, owls and woodpeckers.  There was a debate in the press last year about culling them but I don't think it happened.     

[GrannieAnnie]

I've always thought parakeets were always a tropical bird. Will these survive your winterfreeze?

They are tropical but they've been surviving the freeze here for nearly 40 years!  There are a lot of stories as to how they came to be here, the most popular is that they escaped from a film set at Shepperton Studios during the filming of the African Queen.  There are over 30,000 of them now mostly in the south-east UK.  The biggest roost is at Esher Rugby Club, a couple of miles from here, where around 7,000 birds spend the winter.  They compete with starlings, owls and woodpeckers.  There was a debate in the press last year about culling them but I don't think it happened.     

Interesting! What is that area's lowest winter temp usually?

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

they're from the Himalayas

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6478911.stm

[ceres]

In the last 20 or so years I think the lowest at Heathrow was -12c but that's quite unusual.  Nowadays we get mainly light frosts around 0c, a few times over a winter it'll get a couple of degrees colder.  It just shows though that when they arrived initially the birds must have been very hardy to cope with any degree of freezing at all.  The current generations have been bred here so presumably they have adapted over the years.

[Mr Smith]

Two Blue tits in my back garden today looking in a bird box :)

[Carol]

They will be looking for somewhere warm to roost in during the winter months. Thats why we are encouraged to replace any old nesting material with clean dried grass or whatever. 

 ;D

[thifasmom]

today we had a repeat of yesterday blue and great tits, a goldfinch and collard doves with addition of the wood pigeons but they stayed in the vege patch, a starling also made himself welcome, more will probably show up tomorrow. also there were two coal tits instead of one and the robin was being quite aggressive with all the tits today  ::), he normally waits till early spring before fighting everyone, he must be getting some early practice in :).

[GrannieAnnie]

they're from the Himalayas

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6478911.stm
[/quote
Interesting article.  It must be nice looking out and seeing a bright green bird fly by!
No such thing here.

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

a jay, up to no good
a goldcrest, minding it's own business

[calendula]

an owl in the early hours of the morn, heard it then saw it fly off, a treat  :)

[froglets]

Had my usual gaggle of Chav sparrows & they've started turfing out "rubbish"  onto my yard from the swift box some of them inhabit.  First ever coal tits, next doors blue tits as new neighbours next to them have lots of cats.  The blue tits were also scoping out my robin nest box - don't birds ever read the labels on these boxes!  fat mouse from other next door is getting cocky and shimmying down the honeysuckle to stuff it's pouches and then back up the clematis.  The buzzards are circling above as ever & on my walk yesterday I annoyed a young heron by "chasing" it every time it settled a few wing beats upstream - difficuly not to as I was walking the canal tow path.
Could spend hours watching them all.

[Froglegs]

Got a feeling Mrs sparrowhawk is about an hour ago there was great & blue tits,a black bird a dozen or so goldfinch's,a female chaffinch,a wood (beautiful birds when not on the allotment) pigeon,sparrows and a dunnock, but now not a thing sure sign shes about.

[thifasmom]

So it got dark about ten minutes ago so i cant see anything else.

Woke up to a lovely sunny and fairly warm day. The first visitors I spotted in the garden was Mr. squirrel hoovering up the spilt seed and Mr robin in the apple tree, there was also some tits (query which I did not get to see them properly, will be glad when the apple trees lose all there leaves) visiting the sunflower feeder. I also noticed a couple of jays flying overhead to an oak tree at the back, they have been around since mid September gorging themselves on the acorns there are at least three of them and they spend the day moving from oak tree to oak tree of which there are many in my neighbourhood.

Looked out the window mid morning and saw that the chaffinches have returned two females counted so far :).

At 11.00am a large flock of longtail tits visited, they have been around since mid August. They were zooming and chasing each other in and out of the apple and pine trees very much like dragonflies. Some male blackbirds and wood pigeons also made an appearance a little earlier.

[hopalong]

At about 7 am this morning the blue tits were cavorting around in the silver birch at the bottom of the garden, but then they vanished.  Then nothing much to report until this evening on the allotment, when a grey heron flew over pursued by a flock of parakeets, making their terrible screeching noise. They appeared to be dive bombing the poor creature.  They really are some of the worst yobs in the bird world.

[Carol]

Today has been quiet but had a few great, coal and blue tits, few goldfinches, couple dunnocks, 5 blackbirds, starlings, couple robins and Mrs Sparrowhawk sat on the usual branch eating.  For the rest of the morning all was quiet on the feeding front.

[GrannieAnnie]

Someone mentioned seeing an owl.
We rarely see them but hear them saying, "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you aLL-LLLLL?"
(That's the Barred Owl call).  What do your owls sound like?

(Brrr it is supposed to snow tonight!)

[Rhubarb Thrasher]

Our tawny owl goes "twit twoo", except according to the web, the tawny owl never goes twit twoo, rather it goes "ke-wick hoo-hoo-oooo". Iknow which I prefer

[calendula]

not sure what our variety is round here but the males are twits  ;D and the females screech

[Flighty]

I've just got back from the allotment where, for the first time, I saw a ring-necked Parakeet on the nut feeder. There were a flock of about a dozen Magpies in a nearby tree two of which were performing low-level, close formation aerobatics.
It's good to see all the birds again after their notable absence the past few months.

[Gardengirl]

We had about 3" of snow last night. I had to clear some of the feeders so the birds could get to the food this morning.  Had a fleeting visit from a Jay. A lovely bird with the bright blue flashes on its tail. Haven't seen one around here for ages.