I've been doing a lot of work to our garden recently to improve it both for our own enjoyment and to enhance its suitability for all sorts of wildlife. We are now starting to reap the rewards with a large increase in moths, butterflies and other insects, not to mention the variety and numbers of birds that are visiting our collection of feeders. It has been very pleasing to see that several avian species have decided that our little patch is just the kind of place that they want to bring up their families, as the numbers of juveniles seen so far this year is way ahead of the last. My favourites have been the Blue Tits that have such great little characters that its hard not to love them.





We have also had several young Great Tits though they seem far more wary of people that their Blue cousins.


Our pair of Dunnocks look to have had a successful year as we have two juveniles visiting on a regular basis. I just about managed to photograph one of the adults (below) before it once more disappeared into the undergrowth.


Our most colourful, and incidentally the noisiest, visitors are the Goldfinches. I have never had much luck photographing this species in the past but remarkably a pair arrived whilst I was laying on the grass just beneath the feeders. I was able to prop myself up on one elbow without disturbing them to get what are by far my best pictures of these brilliant birds. What makes them doubly special is that they were in my own garden.



Away from our regular birds we have also been treated to a brand new garden species in the form of a young Nuthatch. We only saw it briefly on a couple of occasions but I'm hopeful that it may make a return. A male Bullfinch has also been visiting more frequently and he does a fine job of hoovering up seed that has been spilt on the ground by the other birds. For this I am eternally grateful as I currently have bird seed germinating all over the place! If only the others were as thorough in cleaning up after themselves.