Earlier this year we had a pair of GS woodpeckers visit the garden daily. Some weeks later they turned up with two youngsters. After several weeks of instructions the parents left never to return. The two youngsters then spent the next month or so visiting daily until a few weeks ago when they too disappeared. As we live high up in a forested area well away from the civilised world, will they have all taken off to live in the forest for the winter months? Will be looking out for them next year as they were such fun to watch.
We have both B&W and green woodpeckers here - not surprising as there are many copses and mature trees in and around the village. Nice to see.
My favourite birds are the owls - lovely barn owls - not seen recently but heard last night and the Little Owl who has included my rose support in his list of regular perching points🥰
The buzzards have been out in force this summer as well. Often 3 or 4 at a time circling the fields at great heights making their strange mewing call. For several days I thought a cat was trapped or injured in the field behind our house....
Heaven is ... sitting in the garden with a G&T and a cat while watching the sun go down
@AnnaB they will be around the woods, plenty of food for them at the moment. They'll come back as the weather turns colder and food is easier to get from your garden than the wood. I see the same behavior every year. Keep putting food out in sheltered positions where the woodpeckers can creep/shuffle around thick vertical stems to put branches in between them and a potential predator. Hanging feeders off tree branches is ideal, woodpeckers will jump from branch to feeders and back, and shuffle round to feel safe.
Our big ash tree is due to be pollarded in November so I've started hanging feeders with peanuts and fat balls on a metal crook style holder under it's canopy ... hopefully they'll get used to feeding from it before the pollarding is done and will continue to visit the feeders afterwards. The woodpeckers where I used to work were happy to visit the crook style feeders in the middle of a large lawn.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Mine have started coming back this week, had the family of greater spotted on the peanuts, and a green woodpecker on the grass. The temperatures are starting to drop here finally, so I'm sure most things will wander out the woods shortly!
I see the red-bellied woodpeckers pretty frequently in the city and at our rural property in Central TX. I always hear their distinctive song long before I see them. They are always on the move up the trees, so you have to be fast to spot them. Occasionally in the country we are blessed to have the Pileated Woodpeckers visit our tall electric pole near the front veranda. They're very skittish birds and I have YET to succeed in getting a picture of one, but this is what they look like. VERY large birds, very noisy when pecking and very pretty indeed.
The GS woodies are regulars here. They have nested the last 3 years in one of our larch trees and bring the young ones to the feeders as soon as they are fledged. They love the peanuts and the fat balls, and one of them, having been brought up on the bird equivalent of M****nalds is so fat that a rear view shows his white chest sticking out either side!
New arrivals are always exciting. Ours this autumn has been one, or maybe two, nuthatches on the feeders. We think there is a slight colour difference, but hard to be certain as they are so fast and I'm too slow with the binocs.
We also had a teal of some kind join our flock of mallard ducks, but not sure if that one is still around. There are several reservoirs within duck flight range that it might have come from, but we may yet see it again. Our duck numbers always multiply considerably when the weather turns bad!
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My favourite birds are the owls - lovely barn owls - not seen recently but heard last night and the Little Owl who has included my rose support in his list of regular perching points🥰
The buzzards have been out in force this summer as well. Often 3 or 4 at a time circling the fields at great heights making their strange mewing call. For several days I thought a cat was trapped or injured in the field behind our house....
The woodpeckers where I used to work were happy to visit the crook style feeders in the middle of a large lawn.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.