My favourite waste of time

One of the things I like best about our house is the kitchen window.  I can see all of our back garden from this window, it was one of the things I loved when we came to view the house and I still love to pull up the blind each morning to look out there.

We have both enjoyed watching our many feathered friends visit this year, perhaps they always visited but I was at work and didn't get to enjoy them, but since I've been at home, watching the birds come to the garden each day has become one of my favourite things to do.  I could spend hours just watching the comings and goings 

We have all the various tits visit the feeder, but the blue tits have been the more regular this Spring and Summer, mum and dad bought their babies to feed, that was so lovely to watch.

We have two robins that come at the moment, this is the skinny one, very cheeky, he is the one that comes down close when we are cutting the grass or weeding, I always say hello to him, I bet the neighbours think i'm mad!

And one a bit plumper, he's a bit more shy.

We also have some of the bigger birds visit.  Mr Magpie loves it when I put cheese on the feeder and will keep coming back until it's all gone!

The crows love the mealworms, but are also partial to cheese too.

We also have a Jackdaw that comes who is also fond of mealworms, it doesn't take long for the bigger birds to clear the table, basically they keep coming back until it's all gone, lol

My blackbird is usually the first one to visit, if he come down and there is no food for him he stands and looks towards the kitchen window as if to say, come on it's feeding time, so funny

I wasn't sure what this one was so asked on fb and was told it was a Dunnock, we have probably had these before but I've mistaken it for a sparrow, which I've noticed we don't have very many of.

The woodpecker comes a couple of times a week, once he's fed he sits up in the tree for a while

I've been trying to encourage the Goldfinches for ages, but although I hear them only one year have we been lucky enough for them to come to the feeders.  I put all the right sort of food out but they don't seem to want to come.  This is the closest we had this year. (Can you spot him in the middle?).  They came on and off all that day, so there must have been something they liked there.

But the ones we were excited to see this year, (they have never visited before) were the Nuthatches.

For a few day's I kept seeing a different bird but it was so quick I couldn't get a picture, then one Sunday we noticed half a dozen or so of them in our oak tree, mainly on the trunk of the tree but they would fly back and forth to the feeder.  I finally managed to get a photo and we used good old google to find out what it was.

They came for a good three or four weeks, although I think they have now moved on. 

Although I used to feed the birds when I worked I never got to enjoy them really, so there are some advantages to being at home :-)

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