Notes from the Feeders - Blackbirds

Among our feeders is one we stock with fatball pieces (Peckish, £2.99, "Home Bargains"). During the winter they are visited a lot by woodpeckers, nuthatches and blackcaps, among others, We've left the feeder in place for the summer, and at present it's a hotspot for blackbirds. We seem to have a remarkably high number of blackbirds in our garden, with the males chasing each other about with furious intent. In fact there are no females to see just now, so I suppose most of the incubation work, as well as nest-building, is left to them.

The blackbirds used to hang around under the feeders pecking up whatever was dropped by those birds nimble enough to use them, but they've now learned to use the fatball feeder themselves, managing to perch there long enough to get what they need. They don't do it in a very stylish way, and there's plenty of flapping of wings, but they manage. Just now they've been joined by some pretty well-grown first-brood juveniles, all spotty and full of attitude, but these haven't to my knowledge tried to perch on the feeders as yet. Occasional jackdaws are able to perch quite confidently on the feeder, despite their larger size, generally staying long enough to wheedle out a big chunk they can fly off with. This morning the song thrush had a go for the first time that I've seen, not very successfully.

The great spotted woodpeckers continue to visit, and the fatballs have now attracted regular visits from the house sparrows that normally live over the road and don't often come to us. There are other feeders nearer, including some we have in our front garden, so either some of those are now left empty or else the fatballs are specially attractive to them. Anyway, from the regularity of their flying visits I suspect we're helping to raise a fair number of sparrow chicks. Last summer we had a visit or two from a family party of starlings - not a bird we normally see on our patch - with the parents teaching the young birds how to do it. Between them they cleared half the food in one sitting - but after a couple or three days they moved on.