Catch up and gold finches

22 September 2012

This morning post included our copy of Bird Watching.  Normally everything stop when the arrives.  The column from the BTO is about wigeon, and very interesting it is too.  It seems that the number of wigeons wintering here in the UK has fallen from the normal 400,000.  The reason is that due to climate change the birds are settling more in areas well away for the UK instead of continuing to here.  I don't know anything about that but it's something to think about.

Something else I have been thinking of is the general fall in bird numbers.  I'm no scientist so please be patient with me while I struggle on here.  I've read or heard that raptors lay less or more eggs dependant on the amount of food available.  Could that also be a reason why the other species numbers have dropped also?  The other question I wondered about is perhaps more complicated; "do birds have in-built sense that tells them that their species numbers are too high and some of the fall in bird numbers is due to this?"  Yes, 

I know that farm bird number have dropped because of the intensive use of inspect sprays, but what about other species.  My mind is muddled here and I can see the wood for the trees really.

Early this month I posted a photo of a sparrow hawk out the back of the flats where we live.  As I said before we have always fed the local birds.  However, we've never had a lot of gold finches visit our feeders, even when our back garden was alongside a wood.  So imagine our pleasure at seeing one gold finch on our feeders tucking into the sunflower hearts.  It's got better now though!  On Thursday Jan counted 13 gold finches on the feeders and the table with an unknown number in the trees as well.  Blue and great tits have been fairly scarce around here too, so we were pleased to see both on our feeders for the first time this morning.

The weather forecast for tomorrow in the south is pretty dire.  I was hoping for a run down to London and perhaps going to have a look at TUB's Scrubs patch.  Now I suppose I shall have to go north instead.  I have a fancy for Marsh Side at Southport and then maybe Martin Mere Wetland Trust.  We'll see.  Hopefully I will have something to report tomorrow or Monday.