What's buzzing or flying near you 2025 ?

Could be but the feathers look more blackish. My regular females are quite light brown and very speckly - as in this one from April.


I have a colleague at work who, in his 40s, didn't know female blackbirds were brown until I told him. I wonder what he thought all the brown birds were ...

 

Just one male Blackbird around at present, they do sometimes move to a new location for a while but usually return by early Winter.

Golden Plover.


Lapwing.


Odd looking Canada Goose/Greylag hybrid.

 

We have starlings now in our orchard. Why don't they feed on the fallen apples instead of the good ones still on the trees?

 

Still have a lot of geese flying over - later than last year.

 

Probably the same reason you dont.

 

Thanks @Spruce. No visible nests at those lower heights so far but it helps to know where to be looking early next year.

 

But @pete we do collect the fallen ones first as long as they are still intact and not damaged.
We also have a green woodpecker which seems to come every day and pecks away at the spartan apples...yes on the tree!

 

I was only joking, yes it is annoying, the black birds do the same with figs I find.

 

A female blackbird was in a few days ago, and a make was sitting in a nearby tree yesterday. We have loads of them around, but we also have a lot of suitable habitat and food for them round here, so they don't need to come into the garden through summer.
It's this time of year that apples are very welcome for them to eat, but it's usually much colder, with plenty of frosty ground, and that's not happening, so the apple I put out last week hasn't been touched yet.

 

For years we had three resident pairs, that were almost trained to come to our hands, and their youngsters that squawked all day for food from them. Since late spring they have all gone. Not a sound. Has avian flu affected blackbirds?

 

Not heard that @Tidemark. I didn't think they were affected by it anyway, but who knows these days - all these diseases/viruses can alter over time.

 

It’s very very odd and out of character for them all to just vanish for months.

Here’s a happy story from Australia.

'Nestflix': the peregrine falcon livestream that has Australians glued to their screens

 

Same here, but it may be just because there is so much more food than usual in the countryside. They only come back to the gardens when they need to. I saw two adult males in my rowan tree yesterday.

 

I think avian flu can effect any bird living or feeding on the path of migrating birds and they would then infect their neighbours. Here, during migration season, large flocks of poultry have tp be kept under cover to protect them. Private owners are supposed to put wires across their hen pens to stop wild migrating birds from landing but ours isn't not large enough for them to fly down and land.

However, I also think a lot of small birds are being affected by spraying, both domestic and agricultural. The fine mist surely spreads to hedgerows and gets on the insects and fruits they eat. We have blackbirds here - heard but not seen - but I used to see far more flitting about the hedges on road and field boundaries and there are far fewer this year.

 

The severe cutting back of the hedges by farmers won't help either.