A Little Adventure

Check him out! This is one of our little Great Tit babies that are hanging out in our garden at the moment! They're pretty timid so stay in the tree most of the time crying to mum and dad for more food. I have to say, mum and dad, hats off, you have been working like crazy.

But this little fella decided to brave it and go for a little adventure. Hopping around the garden, getting stuck in, looking for insects no doubt. We got a little worried at one point as we thought he was going to hop into the house. But instead he flew up onto the neighbours roof – hence the shot above.

Here (s)he is in the tree at the bottom of the garden.
What a cutie!

What a Great Pair!

What a lovely start to the Bank Holiday weekend. I came home from work to such a racket in the garden! And what do I find – two Great Tits razzing around like nobodies business.

They had three little fledglings in the big tree at the back of the garden – no wonder they were busy! Well they were doing a great job – I put out some dried mealworms for them which they lapped up instantly.

Also saw a Wren running backwards and forwards, hopefully he's got a brood on the go – with the hard winter we had they need to boost their numbers. Historically Wrens have been pretty good at bouncing back so fingers crossed he's doing his little bit. Imagine how small a baby Wren would be! Incy teeny weeny – bet they're so cute!

Dead chuffed about the Great Tits, we've also had a baby Starling, Blackbird and a little Dunnock. Waiting on the Goldfinches now... come on Gary, don't let us down!

Feather Someone Else's Nest

I bought one of these the other day. It's a ceramic holder for sheeps wool. Now why would I want one of those I hear you ask? It's for the little birdies. Right about now they'll be looking for twigs and feathers and all sorts of suitable material to line their nests with. A large number of birds would originally have used wool – but because our farmland is being replaced with houses, fried chicken shops and betting shops the little fellas can't really get hold of it anymore.

It's been up about a week now and I can honestly say I've not seen one bird even remotely interested in it! So today I took a little of the wool out of the holder and stuck it on a few random branches around the garden. Maybe that will encourage them to be a bit more nosey.

I'll report back with my findings.

The leeks get a makeover

Believe it or not there is a row of leeks in this picture, you'd never guess! They've been overrun of late with nyjer seed from the bird feeder. I'm afraid Gary the Goldfinch is a little messy and the seeds get everywhere, give them a few days, some nice bright sunshine like this week and they thrive. This was our nyjer jungle just an hour ago, after about three weeks without a weed. So on come the gloves and hey presto, look at the leeks now, pristine!

Amazing what an hour can do. Give it three weeks and it'll be back to the first picture again. I've always had this issue with bird seed but never found a way to get round it. Our feeders are on a pole and we thought maybe putting a conical contraption at the bottom of it to catch the seed could maybe help but then the wind just blows it all around the garden. I guess it's just one of those things you have to put up with if you want to feed the birds. I'm not complaining, I love watching the birdies from my window, an hours weeding seems a small price to pay.

Oh and in the picture as well you can see lots of garden canes which we've dotted around the leeks to stop the local cats from digging them up. Works really well.

Busy Bees (and Wasps)

We only moved into our house in September of last year so the current plants in the garden were abit of a surprise, none more so than the wonderful rose we have growing along the whole length of the garden fence. It's just beautiful, I thought for the past 2 weeks that it's actually our neighbours! But no, it's ours and lovely it is too.

It's absolutely bursting with flowers and the bees and wasps are having a brilliant time collecting little bundles of pollen.


You can see the little balls of pollen on his legs. I'd never seen this until a few weeks ago, they actually carry it around on their legs! Brilliant. So I was standing outside this morning watching them all go about their business and wondering whether you could see when a flower has been pollinated. On a closer inspection you can, it's pretty obvious, well I think anyway.

Here's a shot of flower that's had it's pollen collected.

And here's one yet to be harvested.

Well that's what I think anyway? I would say this is a pretty good assumption? Either way, our little buzzing friends are being kept busy and very happy they are too.

A Frog joins the Blog!

Check him out! We had a great big thunderstorm earlier and I was out snailpicking when I happened to stumble across this little fella. He was so well camouflaged amongst the beetroot I didn't see him at first. I think he was after a nice little munchie after the rain bought all the snails out, I'm sure he won't be disappointed, the garden was teeming with snails, how many do you think I collected? 136!!! Gross huh.

He's a European Common Frog (Rana temporaria) his favourite foods are flies, slugs, snails and worms and he can live up to 15 years.

Anyway, we took a few snaps and he hopped back into the potato jungle. And his name? Of course, Freddy, what else would you call your friendly garden frog.

Say hello to Pete

This is our friend Pete. Pete the Pigeon. He spends probably 80% of his life in our garden. We don't know why he's so fascinated by it. At first we were abit irritated by him, we liked our little Goldfinches and Bluetits and Pete was well, just a pigeon.

But over the past few months, we've both grown rather fond of Pete. He's no trouble, he eats the seeds the other birdies drop on the floor, so he helps keep the garden tidy. He's well presented, he doesn't have gammy feet or one eye or half a wing, he's nicely turned out, some would even say dappa. He's even bought his new lady friend along to show her his humble abode.

We quite like Pete. We think he can stay.

Baby where art thou

Well, another bit of avian excitement today. Due to the not very nice weather today we were both indoors, upstairs in our studio (well... spare bedroom full of computers really) we had the window open to let a nice little breeze in and bob's ya uncle what flew straight in through the window but a little baby blackbird! Bless him. I reckon he must've just fledged, his tail feathers were very short and he was a little more than unsteady on his feet.

He flew straight in and landed on my desk! we both panicked a bit, thinking oh my word, this is going to be interesting trying to get the little fella out again... we shut the door and sat down so he wasn't spooked and he just turned round and flew right out again!

I've really learnt to appreciate blackbirds this year, they look so proud and dapper. The little babies are brown and spotty, there should be a fair few around so look out for them, hopefully you won't get as close as we did this afternoon!

I think we'll name him Billy. Billy the silly blackbird :-) He did brighten our day.

Harry, Pat or Keith?

We had a huge bit of excitement yesterday in the little garden! A bird of prey! Not quite sure what it was though, it all happened so fast. We do know that there's a pair of nesting Peregrines over at the 02 which is probably about a one minute fly for a Peregrine. Apparently there's also Kestrels and Sparrowhawks in Greenwich Park so we've got a choice of three.

BB scared it off as he walked out into the garden and it literally flew right past with something furry in it's talons. Maybe a little mousey?

The garden has been pretty quiet since, think he's worried a few of the little babies but it's gradually getting back to normal, just spotted a Greenfinch today.

So was it a Harry the Hawk, Pat the Peregrine or Keith the Kestrel? Who knows, maybe he'll make a return flight and we'll be able to get a proper ID. Who'd thought such excitement in little ol'SE10!

We're proud parents!

Woo hoo! We were right, we thought Gary the Goldfinch had been tending to a nest somewhere over the Greenwich skies and today we saw the product of all his hard work! Three of the little fellas. We're so proud :-)

You can tell their babies by their plumage, an adult Goldfinch has a red head whereas the youngsters are fawn all over and have the little stripes over their chest and back.

The RSPB has a great little gadget for bird identification if you ever see something and you're not sure what it is.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdidentifier/form.asp

They've all been having lots of fun in the eucalyptus tree at the bottom of the garden. It gives them great cover from the cats and other predators, it's like a birdie playground at the moment, brilliant fun watching them all.

Introducing Gary the Goldfinch

Here in our little garden we're also trying to attract our flying friends. We've been pretty successful on the bird front with a few regular visitors, notably Gary the Goldfinch who we think is now supporting a small family as we haven't seen his Mrs for about 3 weeks.

Goldfinches love Nyjer Seed and the feeder we bought does the trick brilliantly, but we've also bought some Teasel seeds which I'm told is a bit of a Goldfinch delicacy. We planted them a couple of weeks ago but apparently they take 18 months to flower so hopefully Gary & Co will still be around.

We'll keep you posted on Gary's antics.

Welcome

The Little Gardeners is our way of documenting our first forray into vegetable gardening.

Thanks to a move of house we finally have a garden for the first time in five years and boy are we excited!

The only experience of vegetable growing we've had before was five tomato plants on our windowsill last year that yielded the grand total of about six fruit in varying shades of green. So we're hoping to do slightly better this year!

At the new house we've got a small back garden which is a mixture of patio and corner and side beds. A full plan of the space and what we have planted where and sun/shade maps will be coming in a future post. We're learning as we go along and we hope that by sharing our ups and downs you can learn with us (and help when it goes horribly wrong!)

We'll also be keeping you updated on the other small folk we share our space with such as a pair of Goldfinches, a little mousey and the war against snails!

Thanks for visiting.

Tracy & Bryn