So good, they named it twice.
I'm aware of these little birds being around our garden, but you don't often see them. I think we hear them, but we don't see them much. This morning, while the French window was open and some boxes of stuff were getting shifted into the log shed, a Wren flew in and was temporarily trapped in what we refer to as our Garden Room (because it's, like, next to the garden).
Eventually it stopped flapping about, and rested on the back of one of the sofas. My wife picked it up, checked it over, and took it outside, where it recovered for a couple of minutes before flying away. We were reluctant to simply put it down somewhere to get its breath back, since I imagine the Magpies eat these little fellas like popcorn.
All well in the end - very nice to meet a rather shy neighbour.
Might be looking for water, in this weather all their normal supplies are frozen, I've been defrosting the bird-bath every day, might also be hungry (meal-worms for a wren), although that's more the tits and other songbirds, wrens tend to get insects out of the hedge-rows (spiders - yum!).
ReplyDeleteH
We do try to keep the water dishes clear - not easy at -8degC! We've been busy keeping the feeders stocked, but since the ghillie retired we now have grey squirrels in the woods, and they are in the process of wrecking the feeders. I'm looking for squirrel-proof feeders at present!
DeleteI've read somewhere they are the commonest British bird !
ReplyDeleteCrikey - I'm not going to argue with that, but they must be very good at hiding, and there must be an awful lot of them somewhere to balance our neighbourhoos sparrows and blue tits.
DeleteSpot on, Tony. I looked it up - Wrens top the list, with over 11 million pairs, then Robins, with over 7 million pairs, then Sparrows and all the guys I would have expected to be up there, That is a surprise.
DeleteBeautiful birds. One made a nest in the box housing our outside tap last spring - couldn't water the garden all summer. They don't half sing loudly for such little chaps.
ReplyDeleteVery outspoken. Not sure where ours nest, but in the evenings in summer they sit (hmmm - used to sit...) in the Juniper trees which we have just removed.
DeleteNice. One thing I never tire of is seeing flocks of bright green parakeets in the branches of our magnolia tree. Makes a nice colourful change from the combination of crows, pigeons and magpies that make up the usual visitors to the garden. We also get the occasional blue tit but if anything I'm a bit surprised we don't see more of them, maybe like your little wrenny friend they get pushed about a bit by the bigger birds so prefer to keep a low profile.
ReplyDeleteParakeets? What on earth was Brexit all about then? That's pretty exotic - our most spectacular visitors are various-coloured pheasants (we have some black ones this year), which in their day were introduced from somewhere foreign too. Parakeets, though - how are you for tarantulas?
DeleteNah, these are indigenous parakeets, not that foreign lot.
DeleteTarantulas are ok but I would be concerned to see a load of them in the magnolia tree.
Lovely, looks like you’ve had a fair bit of snow too!
ReplyDeleteYes - it's been melting a bit today, but will probably freeze tonight with clearer skies. Nature tried to snow us in on the day I was due to go for my Covid vacc, but I outsmarted it with a shovel and the old 4WD. I'm sitting tight for a few days now, I think - and my snowman-building days are long gone.
DeleteWell done!
ReplyDeleteOur one remaining old fashioned storm window had a couple of sizable ventilation holes on the outside. One little bird (to my wife's disgust I can rarely get more specific) kept popping last winter to peck at bits of seed that had somehow blown in then would pop around for ages while I tried how to think of a way to rescue him without tearing the house apart but then he suddenly vanishing when no one was looking. Once might have been an accident, 3 or 4 times was starting to seem deliberate if dangerous so I covered up the holes.
Wild birds get into all sorts of unlikely places, but I suspect a hint of devilment in there sometimes. We had a couple of summers when we kept getting the odd sparrow in the woodstove - arrived down the chimney - stainless steel-lined. After about a dozen instances of this, my wife suddenly realised that at least a proportion of these visitors were one and the same sparrow - she got know his markings. Must have been his fun on Saturdays. I kept an eye open for a sparrow on the roof, selling tickets for the best ride in town.
DeleteOne of our young swifts pulled the same trick a few years ago but couldn't manage the reverse trip. We ended up opening the stove door and by blocking 3 of the 4 doors into the kitchen, eventually guided him to the porch then out the main door. He never came back to try it again though.
DeleteNow that’s a cute little bird.
ReplyDeleteDon’t get me started on bloody parakeets. Ironic really given my surname.
Today's quiz question - what is tree-shaped, mostly green and sings "WHO'S A PRETTY BOY THEN?" in 6-part harmony?
DeleteOh - yes - and why are there no aspirins in the jungle?
Nundanket I think you may be looking at the same parakeets, as Liverpool Dave is in Worcester Park, Which I noticed you walked to the other day! They are all over London, and sadly it seems were not released by either Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn or Jimi Hendrix..
DeleteBecause the parrots ate em all!
DeleteDavid - I am relieved, if a little disappointed (crestfallen?), to think that the plague of parakeets is more local than I had at first imagined. The reference to Hendrix is still eluding me, though I am working on it.
Delete[4 minutes later]
All right - I admit it - I just Googled it (a process which I have usually found takes most of the fun out of everything), and I now realise that Hendrix was rumoured to be single-handedly responsible for parakeets in Britain. "In the Swinging Sixties" it said - goodness, how splendid to see professional writers in action. Who could miss the chance to trot that one out? Anyway, apparently it's all fake news. It wusnae him at all.
The pharmaceutical pun is a favourite of mine, so brownie points there - you may be as daft as me.
Yeah, I had to Google the Hendrix and Bogart stuff too!
DeleteBit of a tangent, but I think my favourite daft 60's animal release story is that of the butterflies at the Stones' Hyde Park concert in 1969. Quoting from Wikipedia: "Before the Stones opened their set, Jagger addressed the crowd, asking them to be quiet so he could read something as a tribute to Jones. He then read two stanzas of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem on John Keats's death, Adonaïs, from a calf-bound book. After this recital, several hundred cabbage white butterflies were released, despite the Royal Parks authority having stipulated before the concert that any butterflies released by the Stones should be sterilised and should certainly not be of the voracious cabbage white genus. 2,500 butterflies were due to be released, but due to the hot weather, many of them died from lack of air in storage".
Don't hold your breath, but there are people around who still want to re-introduce wolves into Scotland, to control the population of deer in the Highlands. Yes, you're right, it might well control the populations of sheep and tourists also, but the Loonies can't get the hang of that.
DeleteWhen it hits the papers, remember that I mentioned it.
Strangely enough I was a Zoom call with bird minded friends yesterday. I was saying to them I hardly saw any wrens growing up and wondered why. They told me an awful lot of wrens died in the terrible winter of 63/64 and it took ages for their numbers to recover.
ReplyDeleteI have really found birds to be a mighty distraction and comfort in the garden over Lockdowns. My interest in them has grown and I am enjoying reading more about them.
I also feel that birds are a great comfort. My wife has a theory that they are happy, which is why they sing all the time. I guess that might be true, though they probably spend a lot of time terrified out of their minds as well. They brighten up my life, certainly.
DeleteI was glad to learn there are so many wrens - that was a surprise. The bad demographic we have here is that the once dominant Greenfinches have just about disappeared - there was some nasty parasite-borne disease which damaged their beaks and stopped them eating. I occasionally read that they are recovering, but we maybe see 1 or 2 a year. If you see a Greenfinch, say hello from me - I miss them.
My favourites here are the woodpeckers, the nuthatches and the goldfinches, but I love them all.
Except the magpies.
A lovely little visitor. It's a joy having a lot of birds around isn't it, even if one hears more that you ever see?
ReplyDelete(Being a pedant it should of course be written:
Troglodytes troglodytes as the specific epithet is never capitalised.
Now write it out 100 times before daybreak or I'll cut ya balls off!)
These little guys are good friends in times of isolation (even if they don't realise it).
DeleteI'm usually good at the lack of capitals in species names, though I am confused by the fact that when I lived in Ancient Rome there was no lower case alphabet.
One does one's best.
92 - 93 - 94 - 95 - is that the sun already...?
He/she's pretty cute, actually. Glad it was rescued!
ReplyDeleteIt was pretty grumpy about the whole episode. Probably still thinks it only escaped being eaten through cunning.
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