What has brought about this sudden garden birdwatching success? Well the answer is very simple. It's the power of the birdfeeder.
I've invested in a simple feeder that we've been filling with black sunflower seeds. I also put up a couple of fat-filled coconut halves. The result has been a feeding frenzy of blue tits, great tits, chaffinches and dunnocks, among others.
Last week I finally got round to training my binoculars on them and noticed that what I had assumed to be great tits were smaller and stockier that I expected. A reference to a bird book suggested they could be coal tits. I was able to verify this because of the white patch on the back on their heads.
I immediately tweeted the news about the coal tits. Someone told me about long-tailed tits that used to appear in their own garden. Yet another species I'd never seen!
Well, until today that is. Walking not far from home on a Christmas Day stroll, we saw a group of long-tailed tits milling around somebody's birdfeeders. I couldn't believe I'd seen both of these birds in such quick succession!
I managed to get this basic photo of one of the long-tailed tits on my camera phone.
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| Long-Tailed Tit (December 2012) |
The key to it all is, of course, the birdfeeders.
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