Wildlife: Sunflower hearts continue to be a favourite food for birds

They have been increasingly frenetic in feeding their substantial brood with blue tits generally producing seven to twelve youngsters. It can be very hard work. One of the pair gradually become more dishevelled over the three weeks or so of intensive feeding. I think he was feeding the female during two weeks of incubation, but recently both adults have constantly been to and fro to the nest-box. So, I assume it is the male pictured here looking very unkempt and scrawny. Hopefully, since they fledged, he will be able to recover. In the wildlife garden, year-round feeding is good for survival of the birds but perhaps vary the diet with things like dried mealworms and suet pellets. The sunflower hearts continue to be a favourite food as well. Other youngsters have been out and about with baby blackbirds joined by young robins; both sets of juveniles very strongly speckled unlike their respective adults. Juvenile starlings are now feeding voraciously alongside their parents.

In the nearby woodland, the chiffchaffs still sing loudly and persistently, and they are occasionally joined by the pair of blackcaps too. Indeed, the mistle thrush, which in January was really the first songster to strike up (and is especially loud), is still going strong. I imagine they are onto a second brood. Both greenfinches and chaffinches are regular on the feeders and clearly a number of pairs of each has bred nearby. A female chaffinch is now a frequent visitor to the hanging sunflower hearts and displays a dexterity which would not have been the case say twenty years ago. This is behavioural evolution that is happening before our very eyes!

When in and around the garden it is good to both listen out and look up, and this paid dividends this week when a crow ‘mobbing call’ caught my attention. There was red kite drifting low over the house and away towards Gleadless.

Professor Ian D. Rotherham, researcher, writer & broadcaster on wildlife & environmental issues, is contactable on [email protected] ; follow Ian’s blog (https://ianswalkonthewildside.wordpress.com/ ) and Twitter @IanThewildside