Possibly because of its different appearance it tends not to be accepted by a lot of the other blue tits, but as you can see its quite capable of looking out for itself. Fortunately its not all on its own as there is one that seems to be quite friendly with it, I would like to think that it may have been its partner from last spring.

   At this time of year their natural food supply is starting to become scarce and they are coming to the feeders in the garden so it should be a good time to see if you can tell the difference between the male and female goldfinches. The male is slightly larger than the female which is not always easy to tell unless they are close together. If you can get a good view of them you can see that the male has more red on its head which extends past the eye, whereas on the female it only extends as far as the centre of the eye. The juvenile has the same wing and tail markings as the adults but lacks the red, white & black markings on the head and face. It also has a streaky brown body compared with the sandy and white of the adults.

Female

Male

Juvenile

    Getting a natural look to your garden bird photos

  It's easy to attract birds to your garden feeders but photographs of birds on a feeder always lack that natural look, you can achieve a far better end result if the feeder does not show in your photograph.   One way to do this is place a small branch as a perch a short distance away from the feeder and focus on this as the birds will often land on this when coming in to the feeder. I find a more effective way is to just extend the length of the perches on the feeder. Just find a attractive looking piece of branch, maybe covered with lichen, about the thickness of your little finger and about 20 to 30cm long. Drill a hole in the end, the same diameter as the perch. Now push these over the perches on the feeder and you have a natural looking perch that the birds will use every time they come to the feeder. You may be lucky and get more than one bird on the perch opening up the opportunity for some interesting action shots as well. The feeder can be cropped from the finished picture giving you a very natural looking finished product.

  Went to Cuan Wildlife Rescue centre at Much Wenlock today to see Fran and to see how my blue tit with one leg missing was progressing with its treatment for scaly mite. It's in good hands and is looking much better than when I took it in just over a week ago. Hopefully its feather condition will improve enough before too long to enable it to be released back into its home patch and it will be fit enough to cope with the cold weather.

  A lovely bright morning to take a walk around the Plush Hill area of the Long Mynd, I thought we may well see Fieldfares and Redstarts on the holly trees that surround the house where the alpacas are kept. Not a thrush in sight despite the trees being absolutely covered in berries, perhaps as the old saying goes, they are saving them thinking that there may well be some severe weather still to come later in the winter. It's strange as in other years they have all been stripped by now, no doubt we will be coming up here again before long so we will see how long they stay on the trees.

    With the robins now starting to pair up it is a good time to take a closer look at the intricacies of the fairly rigid structure of their life style, you don't have to go far to observe some of their activities as many of them can be viewed through your kitchen window taking place in your garden. In January they have or are in the process of pairing up and will then share a territory until mid summer.

Right on schedule, just after Christmas, I was lucky enough to be able to watch the ritual pairing up of two robins in the garden. The female had obviously set her sights on my male robin and made a number of approaches towards him, each time he instinctively  replied with a threat posture which she just ignored. Despite making these gestures he made no real attempt to chase her off and eventually he accepted her into his territory, I later saw them happily eating mealworms in close proximity to each other.

More about THE SECRET LIFE OF THE ROBIN can be seen in an article on my main website where I take a look at what makes our favourite garden bird such a fascinating character. I follow its activities through from late summer to the following breeding season. After its late summer moult it leads a solitary existence until they pair up in mid winter and stay together in a joint territory until the end of next years breeding season. Pair bonding and courtship feeding form part of the rituals that help overcome the robins natural instinct to be a loner.

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  I am just an enthusiastic amateur bird watcher and photographer with a keen interest in understanding bird behaviour. I will occasionally try and pass on a few tips that I have picked up that you may find useful  when photographing birds in your garden.

Twitter Comments

Deswaldo @challenge_des  @MauriceBaker8 Thank you for wonderful videos and information from your YouTube channel and blogs. Sharing will inspire others, like me      04 Jan 15

 Rep.Maurice Baker ‏@MauriceBaker8 @challenge_des Thanks Des for share & your comments, my blog must be starting to achieve its aims of promoting an interest in wildlife   4^th Jan 2015