a Thrush in the garden.

[fudgie21]

This is such a rare occurance now that we got excited this morning when we noticed a Thrush on the feeding table, I think it's the second one this year. We do get plenty of birds at the feeders and love watching their antics.

[Kaz]

Oh lovely

[Aggers]

I don't think I've seen a thrush in the garden here this year.

We have lots of flowering plants, including buddleja, but I've only seen two buterflies.

Our wildlife seems to be suffering in recent years,

[TheOstrich]

On t'other hand, we have heard an owl hunting round here early evenings over the last two weeks, once so loud it could have been on the window-sill - Master O was complaining it drowned out his telly! Our local wildlife expert identified it as a male tawny owl and said there's quite a healthy population of them locally now.

House sparrows seem to have made a bit of a resurgance around us, and I noted a collared dove in the oak tree behind us yesterday, looking as big and fat as a turkey! A welcome reappearance, which reminds me I need to scatter some seed out on the lawn. Amongst the local magpie flocks, there's at least one jay (same family), and I've seen it close-up twice this year. And I think I spotted the resident grey heron from the local nature reserve floating over the bungalows behind our offices on Monday.

What I'm looking for now we're in a cold snap is to see if we get a flock of fieldfares in from the surrounding countryside and descending on our back gardens, as we've had in the past two years.

I don't think our colony of squirrels is a large as last year though - usually it's 4 or 5 of them, this year, so far, I've only seen a couple together.

[saundra]

iv got a black bird eating at an apple i threw out
never see many butterflies either
its the bad summer we had

[Weka]

The bees seem to have returned this year