April garden

Some views of the garden this month

Snakes head fritillary

Magnolia starting to flower

Azalea

Sengo Kaku now in leaf

strawberry flowers

Muscari

Amy's sunflower

Blueberry bush

Forget me nots

Tulips

Stella Cherry in blossom

And in the green house

Tomatoes

Courgettes

Spring onions

Runner Beans

Salad leaves

Amy enjoying watering the pots in the green house

Garden birds in April

Male bullfinch

We have been enjoying watching the birds in the garden this month and have started keeping a bird list. There has been lots going on! We have had lots of visits from bullfinches recently. Sometimes they feed on the grass and other times they sit on the seed feeder.

Female bullfinch

They make me laugh as often the male and female will sit on opposite sides of the feeder, pick out some seeds and then turn their backs on each other as though they aren't speaking and are ignoring each other!! Unfortunately I can't take good photos of the birds with my camera.


We've had plenty of blackbirds hopping around on the lawn and the great tits and blue tits are regular visitors to the feeders. There are always plenty of magpies and pigeons and the occasional dunnock. The robin is always around if we've been doing any digging. We've spotted a wren a couple of times as well

Opposite our house it looks like there are some starlings building a nest under the roof space. We have seen them going in with lots of grass and things in their mouth. There was a big fracca the other morning when the starlings were chasing away a couple of magpies and a pair of ravens, laying claim to their territory. According to the RSPB, starlings lay 4 - 6 eggs mid April and the female mainly incubates them for about 12 days till they hatch. We shall keep a look out for some young next month. They are very noisy birds and aren't always popular but they have amazing colours when you look at them closely, shiny purple and green. Their numbers are declining currently so are on the red list.

We have had 4 nestboxes up in the garden for the last few years but haven't had any birds using them yet. we've spotted a great tit going in one to have a look but they don't seem to find them to their liking. If we don't have any nesting this year i think we will have to try moving them.

Bird box on the silver birch

We had a little look at why different birds have different shape beaks too. Here are our journal pages:

Watching the birds is one of my favourite activities. Iv'e been trying to learn some of the different bird songs but find it really hard to remember and distinguish between them! ah well I'll keep trying.

Spring Birds

We decided to take a trip to our local park today to see if the Sand martins had returned to their nesting holes in the bank of the river. These birds migrate over Winter to Africa but usually return to England in late March/early April to breed. We have observed them flying in to their nesting hole in the river here before but sadly not today. We sat on the bench to eat our snacks for a while but only spotted Magpies in the grass beyond, may be they have not returned yet?

We saw plenty of other birds on the pond - here is the Coot, with its distinctive white patch over its head and beak, which kept ducking right under the water searching for food.

There are lots of canada geese here, which are used to being fed by visitors to the park, so usually turn up to see if there's any food in the offing! One of them started hissing at us and was then chased by a dog who swam into the water after it.

We saw the swans on the island in the middle of the lake. It looked as though they may have a nest there as one bird was sat while the other was busily chasing away any of the other birds that came near. I couldn't get a photo with my phone but here is the island - you may be able to spot 2 white dots in the middle of the picture!

The island is home to one of the largest heronries in England, but I will need to bring a better camera to capture any photos of them! We did spot one today sat in the top of one of the trees - they are amazing - a topic for another day I think!

As we walked round the lake we saw another coot on a nest in the far corner.

The daffodils were in full bloom all round the lake - beautiful.