The Bird Thread

lovely photos!
i'm hoping we get some in our garden again this year.

just caught a blackcap on the feeder but only managed to get a crappy photo as my camera was in the wrong mode :(

Few garden visitors from the last couple of weeks. Not the best photos by a long stretch but you get some nice detail.

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Woodpecker back in the garden. Bugger flew off before I could get even a single shot. So I took some pictures of the sparrows instead.

Sparrows get overlooked a lot, I guess because they are common and have drab colouring, but I love these little guys. There are almost always a handful of them in the garden, and their sociability lends them a personality that you don’t get with many other birds: they squabble; they chat; they muck about. They’re noisy little bastards, and I feel very much like they are “my” sparrows, for no rational reason.

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Seems like a big influx of chiffchaff locally the last two days

Sparrow or dunnock?
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/dunnock/

Female sparrow? Beak is wrong shape for dunnock, I think. And too brown overall.

Definitely Sparrows pictured there. Dunnock are more "Robin" in shape and flit around closer ground level mostly. There's a nesting pair in the garden here and they're great to see. Similarly I rarely bother to photo Sparrow or Dunnock.

Yeh a Dunnock's cheeks and bib would be the same shade of grey as that sparrows crown and much more delicate beak

Inspired to try get the Dunnocks / Sparrows no joy on either yet, a few others. Wren is rarely snapped here too so happy with that effort.

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Have a wren that is a frequent back garden visitor, but tough to photograph as it is not one for staying still. Looks like you’ve caught yours quite nicely.

Love my mob of sparrows. Group of around 10 which take turns on the feeder and pop in and out of the pond for a dip.

same, we love our sparrow crew.
they love a good battle around the feeders. I've managed to get a few good in flight shots of them.
especially cool when you see the parents feeding the recent fledglings.

Hoped to get both Sparrow & Dunnock whilst wfh with camera next to me today. No Dunnocks, hoping they're ok as neighbours cat was about... a few non-Sparrow too.

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What's the one at the bottom? We've had a few very similar looking visitors over the last week here that we've been puzzling over

That's a Male Sparrow

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/old-world-sparrows/

They are maybe the handsomest of garden birds

WHAT! Nuthatch all day long for me.

Too pointy (also don't exist in our garden)

Driving back from Bedford to St Neots just now. Pretty sure an Osprey flew over (surely even I couldn’t confuse it with anything else?). Magnificent thing. Didn’t know they were round here. No pics, obviously (driving).

I saw one a few years ago, sat on a fence post next to the railway line just south of Cambridge. They are migratory, spending the winter in Africa then returning to the UK in spring. There are quite a few breeding pairs who reside on Rutland Water, so it's no surprise to see one in Bedfordshire.

Cool. I’ve seen them through binoculars in Wales, just not with the naked eye. Starkly dark and white with the eye stripe and huge, long primary feathers and a big wingspan vs body - couldn’t be anything else.

Dunnock (repost of Sparrows too for comparison)

Edit: Bonus Robin pics

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Mandarin Ducks have moved in nearby

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Finally copied photo's over from dslr, here's a Wood Pigeon pic I got & quite like.

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Saw an Alpine Swift in Springfield park yesterday.