Busy bees

The various types of bee in the garden, which I’ve mentioned before I’m not very good at identifying, have been very busy during the past week feeding on the various flowers in the garden.

I have got a lot of self-sown red poppies currently which have sprung up in my vegetable plot and so I’m leaving them to flower and the bees are certainly enjoying them. They have also been visiting my roses and a foxglove in my herbaceous border. There are various other flowers for them to go on and I must admit I’m leaving some patches of clover in my lawn to flower rather than mowing it down. Every time I buy something new for the herbaceous border I’m checking that it is good for bees, butterflies and insects.

The various birds have also been busy bees in their own way. At least one woodpecker comes every day to the suet log and peanuts and it is usually the male bird with the red top on its head. The blackbirds are busy too, with both the male and female collecting various things from the garden and flying off, so I assume they have a second brood, not that I saw any youngsters from an earlier one. On occasions there is a second male bird in the garden but there’s a little bit of a dispute going on there. On the duller, damper and cooler days the starlings have been coming to the feeders in greater numbers, probably about a dozen and there are quite a few adult birds arriving and taking food, so I imagine that they also are having a second brood. The sparrows are similarly busy and seem to be using the new seed feeder which I’ve hung in a buddleia bush where they larger birds are unable to perch. I can’t actually see that feeder from my windows but it’s certainly going down in level each day.

Other larger birds coming to the garden include the crow and on some occasions two crows, a couple of young magpies, at least that’s what I assume as they seem to be slightly thinner than the adult birds which were around in the garden before. There is the occasional jackdaw and also a couple of collared doves and a couple of wood pigeons. As I’ve mentioned before the collared doves and wood pigeons stay later in the day although not as late as the robins or the blackbirds.

I still have a group of feral pigeons or shall I say groups, as I’ve talked about before, as there are some distinctive feather colours and patterns. The completely white bird has been visiting again this week and there are several others who are generally have darker feathers but look as if they’ve been splattered with white paint.

I haven’t seen the fox recently although there’s been some evidence of an overnight visit in the garden and on a few occasions the squirrel has been coming to help itself to some of the peanuts. In the past I’ve seen a squirrel take away a complete fat ball from the feeder and presumably they’ve been buried somewhere. I thought perhaps that was just peculiar to my squirrel but a friend mentioned that they had found several fat balls buried in their garden where a squirrel had been feeding.

Written by Margaret Emerson