A Redwing in my Redesdale Garden

It's been snowing off-and-on in Redesdale since mid-December. The last week has seen the heaviest falls and there is as much as a foot of snow in parts of my garden today. Naturally, the birds welcome any opportunity for an easy meal and the four feeders are being filled daily.

The list today included a pair of Brambling, the first of the winter in the garden, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Robin, Coal, Blue and Great Tits, Rook and Starling. A heron flew over at lunch time. But the greatest surprise of all the visitors today was a single Redwing (Turdus iliacus).

I had cleared the snow from the steps at my front door this morning and put out handfulls of a bird table seed mixture I was given at Christmas and some peanuts, chopped finely in the food processor. It was here, on the steps and just under my living room window, that the Redwing appeared. It's the first I've seen in the garden since moving into the valley more than six years ago.

I took the following pictures through my living room window; I didn't want to open the window for fear of frightening it away.

Butterflies and Buddleia (2)

Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock feature in the second piece recording the butterflies in my garden last Saturday. If you would like to share details of a favourite butterfly habitat in Northumberland, and what might be seen there, I would very much like to hear from you.

Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae)

Peacock (Inachis io)

Both together on one flower

Butterflies and Buddleia (1)

It was warm and sunny in Redesdale on Saturday. I had intended to go out for the day to look for butterflies but they were visiting me in such large numbers that I couldn't resist the temptation and ventured no further than the garden.

Painted Lady, Red Admiral, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell and both Large and Small White butterflies were all in attendance and feeding on the buddleia bushes. The Red Admirals were not as frequent but I was delighted to photograph them for the first time.

Painted Ladies and Red Admiral feature here, with the Peacock and Small Tortoiseshell in the next of this two-part piece.

Both together on one flower
Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)
Red Admiral underside
Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui)
Painted Lady underside

Garden Butterflies

I have not seen many butterflies in my Redesdale garden this year. Not yet, at least. I expect that when the buddleia bushes flower there will be more. The garden list includes both Large and Small Whites, Orange Tip, Peacock, Comma, Small Tortoiseshell and Red Admiral. All of the pictures here were taken in 2008.

Large White (Pieris brassicae)
Comma (Polygonia c-album)
Peacock (Inachis io)

Orb-web Spiders

I gathered some roses from a bush in my garden yesterday to put in a vase indoors. Afterwards I noticed something creeping about on the roses and went to investigate. It was this tiny spider which must have been transported into the house with the roses. It is an orb-web spider (Araniella cucurbitina). This is one of the smallest orb-web spiders, often spinning its web across a single leaf. It is only ten millimetres in length including its legs and has a bright red spot under the tip its abdomen. It is abundant in a wide range of trees and bushes.

Although the family name Araneidae is now preferred, these spiders are called Argiopidae in much of the older literature. Orb-web spiders spin more or less circular webs. The orb is built in a framework whose shape depends on the available supports. Most of the webs are slung in bushes, but walls and fences are equally acceptable. A description of the web-making process can be found here. Further information in the Araneidae can be found here.

Araniella cucurbitina

The Early Bird

I have all the windows open to the fresh air this morning and the sounds of birdlife are all around. Somewhere amongst the buttercup-filled pastures to the west, curlews are calling; their haunting, falling call one of the great pleasures of an upland spring. And occasionally too, I hear the faint piping of an oystercatcher in the opposite direction towards the River Rede. Earlier, a linnet sat on the sunny ridge of a neighbour’s roof; its breast so puffed up in song that it looked exactly as if it were wearing a Pickwickian-red waistcoat, two or three sizes too small. In the garden, coal and blue tits, siskins and a solitary female redpoll, a nuthatch and a great spotted woodpecker, chaffinches and goldfinches are visiting the feeders and bird table, flitting hurriedly in and out again with food for young which I think I can sometimes hear nearby but can never see through the mass of leaves which now cover the poplars. And then, into the midst of this harmony, a jackdaw elbows in, frightening away all the small birds to tension-filled waiting areas in the surrounding trees before casually stepping onto the peanut feeder and breakfasting on the nuts.

I don’t suppose this behaviour is based on anything other than opportunism; the jackdaw sees the chance of an easy meal and takes it. And for all their strutting style, I still prefer jackdaws to starlings; I just wish they would go and feed somewhere else!

The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) on the peanut feeder

Garden Birds

It's five and a half years since I moved to the Rede valley and, coming here from a small house with an almost birdless back-yard garden in the suburbs of Newcastle upon Tyne, it has always been a pleasure, and sometimes a great surprise, to watch the various birds that visit or fly over my garden. I am lucky here to have a small mixed wooded area immediately in front of the house which includes white poplars and Scots pine and provides cover for the birds when visiting the feeders.

Very occasionally, a new bird is added to the list; the stars this year have been the Redpolls that appeared out of the blue on the first day I put up my new nyjer seed feeder in late February. Long-tailed tits also found, but seem subsequently to have forgotten their way to the garden this year. It's not a very large list, some 40 species at most, but when the weather or something else stops me from going out, they all help brighten the day.

The list includes the males, females and young of most but not all of the following: Greenfinch, Goldfinch and Chaffinch; Brambling, Siskin and Redpoll; Coal, Blue, Great and Long-tailed tits; Blackbird, Song Thrush and Fieldfare; Reed Bunting and House Sparrow; Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff; Pied Wagtail, Wren, Robin, Dunnock and Nuthatch; Great Spotted Woodpecker and Tree Creeper; Tawny Owl and Sparrow Hawk; Rook, Carrion Crow and Jackdaw; Starling and Pheasant with Heron, Swallow, House Martin, Swift and Buzzard flying overhead.

Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris)

Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis)

Blue Tit (Parus caeruleus)

Pied Wagtail (Motacilla alba)

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)

Tuppence a Bag

It's a long time since you could feed the birds for tuppence a bag. These days, the supply of wild bird food is big business and the food itself comes in 20kg sacks with prices to match. And there's more: We lovingly provide our feathered friends with somewhere to perch, drink and bathe, often much better facilities than they enjoy in their own homes, and there are feeders especially designed for almost every kind of bird food you can imagine (well if you supply the food, why not create special feeders in which to serve it).

I bought my friend Sandra a bird feeder for her birthday last December. It was a small, yellow, wooden house enclosing a house-shaped cake of bird food. She loved it of course, and placed it near her kitchen window so she could watch the birds when she was washing the dishes. I think it was the sight of a nuthatch feeding that initially captured her attention and which led her one day to buy another feeder, and then another, until now she has quite a collection. And all of the time, she is attracting more species into her garden. Her excitement was dangerously infectious when we last spoke, to arrange a birdwatching day out as you might expect, and we spent as much time comparing notes about the birds that visit our respective gardens as a pair of thirteen-year-olds might about the boy next door.

And yet, this doesn't stop us from wanting the best we can afford for the birds we welcome into our gardens, and not least because of the pure, old-fashioned, pleasure they provide. Long may it continue.

Hard times for this Blue Tit (Parus caeruleus): Winter feeding is particularly important

Nuthatch (Sitta europaea)

Siskin (Carduelis spinus)

Bramblings in my Redesdale Garden

I have been a little surprised by a pair of bramblings, lingering into late April in my Redesdale garden. The female is active this morning but I have not seen the male for a couple of days so perhaps he has moved on. I know that bramblings sometimes stay as late as May and have, albeit rarely, bred in the UK. Whatever the story with this pair, it is a delight to have them in the garden.

On the 30 April, the female was not seen, so she too might have moved on. The two pictures below were digiscoped using my Nikon ED50 fieldscope and Nikon Coolpix P5100.