Becoming a twitcher

My mum has always been a bit of a bird lover, well any animal lover really.  The amount of bird feeders and birds she has in the garden now makes me feel overwhelmed and resistant to following in her footsteps.  But I thought I should really be feeding the birds so we put up a little coconut feeder which should feed most garden birds.  Well as you can imagine we are now all hooked!  The Little Ones can see the feeder from the kitchen table and we've started to name the birds - yes . . . really!  There's 'new Daddy', a Robin who looked very scrawny who was obviously feeding himself, a wife and some babies.  Then there's 'Grandad', another Robin, who has been looking after 'new Daddy'.  It's so interesting to see their little social lives happening outside our window.  Apart from Robins, we have a Coal Tit and a Great Tit and some Blackbirds but they haven't bothered with the feeder yet.

I decided that this was a good opportunity for the Little Ones to learn something about birds and how to recognise them so I downloaded some photos of the birds that we might see in the Garden with a few notes and then discovered that the RSPB has a Youth section where you can download pictures of common birds to colour in, which were a great hit for the Little Ones. 


The only downside to all this feeding is that it does have an effect, as we have now attracted another Robin family into the garden and I know that Robin's are very territorial I just hope I haven't inadvertently started a Robin War!!  A similar thing happened in mum's garden, she had so many Sparrows feeding in her garden that it attracted a Sparrrowhawk!!!  Ah nature . . . there's no stopping you!

What birds do you have in your garden?