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.