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Piece written to introduce my site on Wales and the Borders .net
My garden and its birds have kept me going through the "dark days" of illness. I have had periods when I could hardly move or think, but there's always been the life and colour outside the window to help me cope. Fortunately I've found that the closer I scrutinise the garden's birdlife the more interesting it gets. As I built up daily records of the avian comings and goings, so seemingly commonplace sightings took on significance.
I also made a surprising discovery. Interesting, even rare, birds can be seen from an ordinary suburban garden, given enough time and patience. Yellow-browed Warbler, Red Kite, Mediterranean Gull, Short-eared Owl, Hobby and Crossbill - it's quite a thrill to find them on your own patch. I must admit this excitement is sometimes tempered by a feeling of, " how on earth am I going to explain this!"
Last year (1998), with my brain back to something like working order I bought a computer. The idea of making a web site appealed to me and the choice of subject was obvious - the birds. I got hold of Teach Yourself HTML and in a few days I'd knocked something up. I thought, "there's nothing to this web design lark." I was wrong!
Over the course of the last year I gradually realised that I'd made every mistake in the book (and some new ones that weren't in the book!). Through trial and lots of error "Birds in a Cheshire Garden" has developed and is hopefully still improving.
p.s I'm now 100% better!Original Introduction
Being chair/garden bound, through illness, has huge and obvious drawbacks. It has, though, given me the opportunity to watch the garden and its birds very closely. My garden in Wilmslow,Cheshire (north-west England) has in fact, become my very local ‘local-patch’.
What this has shown me, as much as anything, is that there are interesting things to be seen even from a fairly ordinary suburban garden.
The last few years have been notable for a number of distinctly unusual garden birds. Short-eared Owl, Hobby, Red Kite, Bewicks Swan, Med Gull, Woodcock, Raven and Crossbill have been seen flying over. And the all time star bird - Yellow-browed Warbler put in an appearance in September 1997.
I have often wondered whether there’s anything especially attractive to birds about this location. Alternatively I could be particularly lucky or it could simply be a case of spending so much time watching the garden that I see practically ‘everything going’. I think the latter is probably the case and that there are interesting things to be seen almost anywhere given enough time and patience.
Having said that I was very lucky to be able to watch Goldfinches flocking into the garden in ridiculous numbers. 175 of them feeding on niger seed in December 1996 was an astonishing sight.
A concerted effort to record the autumn migrants flying over the garden in 1996 proved fruitful. Special attention was paid to the passage of Meadow Pipits, a total of 1,511 being counted. On 1 Oct a very good count of 481 Meadow Pipits was made. It did though, induce a severe case of pipit-fatigue! Even more unexpected was a trickle of Yellowhammers flying over in October.
The garden is situated in Wilmslow, Cheshire. Manchester is around 10km to the north, the Mersey Estuary 25km to the west while 10km to the east are the foothills of the Peak District. Rostherne Mere, the probable origin of many of the gulls and Cormorants that fly over, is 10Km away to the north-west and the nearest open countryside is farmland 1Km to the east. The garden
It is a middle-sized garden occupying around 0.1 ha. A large common lime tree dominates the garden, though despite its size it isn’t particularly attractive to birds. The two mature willows, although much smaller, are far more interesting ornithologically. Most of the warblers, for example, that visit the garden are seen on these trees.
The pond is also very attractive to birds. Three years ago a watercourse was added and is in operation, more or less, permanently. This further improved the pond and the flowing water is something of a magnet for birds, especially during freezing weather. Goldcrests, Blackcaps and Long-tailed Tits are particularly enthusiastic pond patrons and at times 20 Goldfinches or tits arrive for a mass bathe.
The pond is surrounded by uncut grass - the ‘wild area’. This is also the feeding area. Peanuts are provided throughout the year, with the addition of suet, apples, oats, canary grass seed, sunflower seed and niger seed in winter.
The neighbourhood has some interesting nesting birds - Spotted Flycatcher, Bullfinch, Goldcrest and Nuthatch for example. Although several birds nest on the ‘wrong’ side on the fence, the garden itself does rather poorly for nesting birds. Only Starling and Blue tit can be relied on to nest each year.
There have been many changes in the garden's birds since the 1970`s. On the debit side,Song Thrush, House Sparrow, Starling, Pied Wagtail and Tawny Owl have all declined considerably as have flyover Rooks.
These losses are outweighed, though, by the gains. A number of species that were rarities in the 1970`s are now commonplace, particularly: Sparrow Hawk, Blackcap, Jay, Long-tailed Tit, Goldfinch and Siskin in the garden, and Cormorant, Lesser Black-backed Gull and Grey Wagtail flying over. Most of the increases (though definitely not Goldfinch) seem to be independent of, what has become, a far more generous feeding regime.
At the risk of being ‘species-ist’ or even ‘attractive plumage-ist’, to exchange Goldfinches and Siskins for Starlings and House Sparrows doesn’t seem too bad a swap!
A ‘Heath’ type moth trap has been operated intermittently for the last four years and 166 species of macro moth have been identified. Pale Pinion, Lime Hawk, Poplar Hawk and Hummingbird Hawk have been amongst the more interesting. Nineteen butterfly and nine dragonfly species have also been seen. A healthy frog population has built up very quickly in pond, while on the mammal front - Foxes, Hedgehogs, and Pipistrelles are occasionally seen. Grey Squirrels, on the other hand, are seen all too often! Other Wildlife
"Birds in a Cheshire Garden"