Category Archives: Sandra’s Bird Column

Bird of the Week: Blue Tit

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If I turn my head and look out of the window, I can see a lot of young birds getting to know my feeding station. They are now old enough to fend for themselves, although they’re still trying to get their parents to feed them.

There are young sparrows, starlings, greenfinches, great tits and blue tits. The young ‘blueys’ are the most vocal, constantly calling their scruffy-looking parents. This is a very stressful time for the adults. It is hard work rearing up to 14 (!) babies that are hungry all of the time! Sometimes the adults return to the nest with insect food every 90 seconds! Once the little ones have fledged, they follow their parents around.

FEED ME!!

Now that the young ones are old enough to eat seeds, bits of peanut and fat balls (although insects will still be their main diet), the adult birds have brought them back to my garden where they spent much of the winter. They know there’s always some food available – which is very important.

Blue tit in winter

Once you start feeding wild birds, especially when natural food is hard to come by, don’t stop. Blue tits in particular will come to rely on this food source. In winter, they might not have enough energy to find food elsewhere, so if you decide to help these little balls of fluff, make sure they don’t visit your garden in vain and waste valuable energy.

If you’d like to be part of the family, blue tits will happily accept a nest box in your garden.

Blue tit

The blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) is among the nation’s favourite garden birds. They’re tiny, fluffy, colourful, cute and bold as brass. When I first set up my feeding station, the first bird to explore it was a blue tit – and I hadn’t actually finished. And yet, it was only a couple of metres away! This little bird didn’t take any food, but hopped from feeder to feeder, checking everything out and then flew off. Five minutes later it returned with all of  its mates for a snack.

Watching you..

Blue tits are great fun to watch – they are little acrobats and will entertain you for hours, hanging from your feeders upside down.

Juvenile blue tit: it has a dull cap and yellow cheeks

Blue tits are also very clever birds. Two examples: blue tits have been familiar with the concept of aromatherapy much longer than humans. They use herbs such as mint or lavender to line and disinfect the nest or feed the leaves to their young in order to help them fend off parasites. And in the 60s, blue tits learned how to peck through foil milk bottle tops to get to the cream. This behaviour was passed on to other members of their flock and more and more birds learned how to do it. Clever or what?

Clever blue tit

A worthy bird of the week indeed!

For more blue tit  photos please have a look here:
http://www.finepetportraits.co.uk/blue-tit-bird-photos.html

Sandra Palme
www.finepetportraits.co.uk

Bird of the week: Long-Tailed Tit

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As you will have gathered by now, I love all birds – they’re all different, and they don’t need to be colourful to be beautiful. Some are majestic (I will soon introduce you to a bird of prey), some are pretty, some are colourful, some are elegant. When it comes to cuteness, there’s one bird in particular that springs to mind: the long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus).

Long-tailed tit

Long-tailed tit - AWWWWWWW!

A small, round ball of fluff with a very long tail, big eyes and a stubby beak – you can’t help but go ‘awwwwwwww’.

These little acrobats always come in flocks and constantly chatter with each other. You can’t watch them and not smile.

Upside down

If you’re lucky, they might come and visit your bird table in winter and feast on nuts and fat cakes, or mealworms as they are insectivorous birds.

Long-tailed tit with food for young

Their nest is a work of art made out of moss, lichen, loads of soft feathers and spider’s webs. And the fledglings that emerge from this nest are…you guessed it: too cute for words.

Long-tailed tit fledgeling

So go for a walk in the park or in the countryside – you might be lucky and come across a family of long-tailed tits that will keep you entertained for hours!

LTT flying

For more LTT photos please have a look here:
http://www.finepetportraits.co.uk/long-tailed-tit-bird-photos.html

Sandra Palme
www.finepetportraits.co.uk

Bird of the week: Common Whitethroat (Sylvia communis)

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Today I’d like to introduce you to the wonderful family of ‘Old World warblers’.
I love all warblers but the whitethroat is a particular favourite of mine so I’ll start with this species.

Whitethroat saying hello

Whitethroat saying hello

Like most British warblers the whitethroat spends the winter in Africa. This means it has only just returned to Britain and I am happy to report that this year record numbers have made it back to their breeding grounds! Great to hear something positive about bird population numbers for a change!
Whitethroats can be found in open country and shrub/bramble where they feed (on insects and berries in autumn) and nest.

So if you go for a walk in the countryside (and you really should, there is so much to see!) you are very likely to encounter a whitethroat – in all likelihood a male. He will probably be perched on top of a bush (or possibly be skulking in a clump of bramble) and sing, sing, sing!

 

Or you might witness one of his display flights that he performs while singing. The one thing he won’t do is sit still for you. Whitethroats are completely hyper, always in action, never bored!

Male whitethroat in full song

Male whitethroat in full song

 

 

Whitethroats are also very inquisitive little birds – you can be sure they have been watching you long before you know they’re around.

Inquisitive whitethroat

Inquisitive whitethroat

 

 

They do like to announce their presence though by scolding you with their grumpy-sounding alarm call. Always makes me smile!
Check out the whitethroat’s scratchy but lovely song and alarm call here:

 


As you can tell, I love whitethroats. They’re full of character and although they might not be colourful, they’re both beautiful and SO cute!
Male whitethroat

Male whitethroat

Female whitethroat

Female whitethroat - she lacks the male's grey head and pinkish chest

Male whitethroat gathering nesting material

Male whitethroat gathering nesting material

Juvenile whitethroat in late summer

Juvenile whitethroat in late summer

Whitethroat fledgling

Whitethroat fledgling

 

For more whitethroat photos please have a look here: http://www.finepetportraits.co.uk/whitethroat-bird-photos.html

 

You will meet more warblers here  over the course of the summer!

 

Who are you?

Bird of the week: House Sparrow

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The cheerful, chirpy house sparrow (Passer domesticus) was once a very common sight in towns and villages.
Sadly, the house sparrow population in Britain has declined dramatically since the 1970s – in some urban areas by up to 90%.

A shortage of nesting sites is one of the major factors. Sparrows like to nest in the eaves of houses or tree holes. If you know that there are sparrows in your area, why not help them out? They will happily accept special nest boxes that can house more than one pair. There is also a shortage of food, especially of insect food that the nestlings are fed on and seed. Sparrows come to my feeding station all year round and I am very happy to offer some seed.

Sparrows are very social birds and can always be found in flocks. The birds feed together, sing together, bathe together and even nest next to each other. There’s a clear hierarchy within the flock.
Sparrows having a bath
The older males – the ones with the largest black ‘bibs’ – have the highest status.
The sparrow is anything but a ‘boring brown’ bird. Check out some of my favourite photos:
This beautiful male house sparrow has just had a bath.

Female house sparrow

Young sparrow

Male sparrow with nesting material

I am lucky. I just need to turn my head and am able to watch a family of house sparrows in my garden. “My” sparrows have recently started to bring along their fledglings – at least six tiny birds that are constantly calling for food. A real joy to watch! The adults feed them insects, seeds and bits of fat ball that I provide. Some of the juveniles can already feed themselves when Mum and Dad are not looking but as soon as they turn around, the young ones beg as if they hadn’t been fed in hours. Too cute for words!

Baby sparrow begging for food

Juvenile sparrow

Sparrow feeding chick

If you would like to see more photos of house sparrows, please visit my gallery:

house sparrow

Everybody has heard of the sparrow – let’s make sure it will be chirping in our cities, towns and villages for many many years to come!

Sandra Palme
www.finepetportraits.co.uk

Bird of the week: The Kingfisher

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The Eurasian kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is one of Britain’s most colourful and popular birds.

Kingfishers hunt fish, tadpoles and aquatic insects and are therefore found by rivers and lakes.

Despite their colourful appearance – bright blue and orange – they are not actually easy to spot. They’re quite small – not much larger than a sparrow – with a short tail and very long bill.  The sexes look pretty much alike but you can tell them apart by having a close look at their bills: the female’s lower beak is orange (as if she had put on some lipstick!) and the male’s is all black.

Kingfishers are very territorial and you will only ever see more than one at a time during the breeding season – if you’re lucky that is.

The kingfisher is a so-called ‘schedule 1’-bird, protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Thich means that unless you’ve got a licence, you mustn’t go near a nesting site or disturb the birds in any way.

So if you are lucky enough to see a kingfisher, most likely perched on a branch or log near the water, bobbing its head up and down before diving and within seconds emerging again with a fish, keep your distance and enjoy this magical experience. Or you might just notice an electric blue flash across the water, come and gone before you realise what you’ve just seen.

Let me share some of my favourite kingfisher photos with you – they are truly stunning birds and I hope you’ll get to see one yourself!

Male Kingfisher

Male Kingfisher

Female Kingfisher
Female Kingfisher
Male Kingfisher with fish

Male Kingfisher with fish

Male Kingfisher preening

Male Kingfisher preening

Female Kingfisher

Female Kingfisher

Sandra Palme
www.finepetportraits.co.uk

Bird of the week: The Nightingale

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For about six weeks each spring – in April and May – a very special songster’s voice graces the English countryside. So my first bird of the week has to be the nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos).
Whether you’re a birder or not at all interested in birds, whether you are familiar with bird names such as dotterel, corncrake and lesser redpoll or whether your knowledge of bird species starts and ends with blackbird and robin – everyone has heard of the nightingale.
This bird is a legend, a myth that has been mentioned in poems, songs and stories for hundreds of years. So – what do YOU know about the nightingale? It’s a bird…and it sings by night? Correct (although it does also sing during the day).
Have you ever actually heard a nightingale though? Do you know what it looks like?
Sadly, most people’s answer to these questions will be ‘no’.
This is sad because one of the reasons is the nightingale’s decline – fewer than 7,000 males can be found in the whole country, most of them in the Southeast of England.
It is also very sad because listening to a male nightingale’s song – and it is the males that sing in order to attract females and to defend their territory – is pure magic and an experience you will never forget. No other bird can hit and creatively combine sequences of low and high notes quite like a nightingale can. I can’t really describe it – but it touches the heart.
Check out this page on the RSPB’s website for an example of a nightingale’s song:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/n/nightingale/index.aspx
Seeing one is another matter – nightingales are very elusive birds and the males love to sing hidden in a bush or thicket.
Some might think that a nightingale – the great songster – must also have a striking appearance. Wrong – males impress females with their fantastic voices and thus don’t need a colourful plumage. Plus – if you give away your location by singing day and night with a wonderful and loud voice you certainly don’t want predators to be able to spot you easily. So nightingales are basically brown with a white-ish chest and roufus-coloured tail. However, I don’t agree with people who call a nightingale ‘plain’. I think it is a very beautiful bird indeed.
I would like to share some of my favourite nightingale photos with you, all taken within the last few days – I feel very privileged to have heard and seen nightingales on numerous occasions, some perching right in front of me – this certainly doesn’t happen very often.   

Nightingale

nightingale

Nightingale singing

Nightingale

Nightingale in full song

This is the best time of year to watch and listen to all of the resident and migrant birds that have just returned from Africa (including the nightingale). They are now singing their little hearts out, show off their best plumage and are more easily seen than at any other time of the year. I shall introduce you to more of those wonderful birds in the next few weeks!

O NIGHTINGALE that on yon blooming spray 
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, 
Thou with fresh hopes the Lover’s heart dost fill, 
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May.

(from: “Sonnet to the Nightingale” by John Milton) 
Sandra Palme
www.finepetportraits.co.uk

Welcome to Frost Magazine’s new Bird Column!

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Are you interested in all things avian? Maybe you would like to find out more about the birds you see in your garden or on the way to work? You enjoy looking at or taking photos of our native wildlife and birds in particular? Or maybe you think wild birds really are quite boring? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, then you are in the right place!

My name is Sandra Palme – I’m a professional pet portrait artist, birding enthusiast and experienced bird photographer.  From May 1st, I am going to share some of my favourite bird photos and stories with you, tell you some interesting facts about British birds and show you why  birds around you are a joy to watch and also need your help as sadly, many species are in decline.

Birds are beautiful, birds are fun, birds are clever, birds deserve our attention – and I’ll prove it.

Robin
Robin

So I hope you’ll join me next week!

When speaking to each other, in their languages of colour and song, birds inadvertently speak to us. They include us. And we cannot help but respond – so long as we have some streak of life left in us. (Simon Barnes).

Sandra Palme
www.finepetportraits.co.uk