We went shopping for shoes a couple of weeks ago and bought a bird feeding station. Well, that is what happens when Chantal takes me shoe shopping. The shoe retailer of choice was an outlet in Woodlands garden centre, which is how I was persuaded to go along. The shoe shopping was not a success, since it appears that the style that Chantal wished to purchase, a replacement for some shoes that she already has and finds comfortable (Chantal is a martyr to her feet) was a summer stocked item.
Naturally I had already wondered off browsing elsewhere, and found the bird feeding stations. For a while we had hung various bird feeders from a tree above a path, which were popular with the birds, but the fallen uneaten seeds were sprouting profusely and uncontrollably between the slabs. No doubt with a bit of careful selection we would have found a weed or two suitable for drying and smoking. We wanted a proper feeding station on the lawn, in close view of the kitchen and study windows, where sprouting seeds could be simply mown. Woodlands had a reasonable selection, and after spending even more time browsing than Chantal had done in the shoe shop, we chose one with a lot of places to hang feeders. In fact we can now hang up six types of food and have a seventh in a feeding tray, and have bowl full of nice clean water. I’m afraid that “our” birds don’t get offered a 7 course meal – some of the food on offer is duplicated elsewhere on the feeding station.
Unsurprisingly at this time of the years the feeding station gets very busy, with a queue of blue tits, coal tits, long tailed tits, greenfinches, goldfinches, yellowhammers, a nuthatch, and a woodpecker, and they are just the ones that I recognise. Last week a sparrow hawk landed on the top. Sparrow hawks don’t eat seeds. They eat the birds that are eating the seeds. On more than one occasion we have seen a sparrow hawk swoop down and snatch a blue it from the bird table while we were in the garden. On this occasion the entire flock of seed feeding birds sensed the incoming predator, and fled into an adjacent prickly bush. The hawk was disgusted by this unfair play, did a large and disdainful poo on my lawn, and flew off, too quickly to be photographed.
The feeding station is a great source of entertainment for Chantal and her camera, and several bird shots have appeared in her 365 project including the arty oil-paint effect one below.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
