Garden Birding

It’s the fourth week of lockdown in the UK and, despite having so much time and so little to do except making university notes, I’ve found that everything I would like to do with all this free time, I can’t. I would give anything right now to travel to a woodland decorated with bluebells, or stroll along a reed bed. What I wouldn’t do to breathe in the dank smell of a bird hide, or taste an accidentally-inhaled midge. However, whilst I was moaning to my family about my sorry state, I realised that truly, I have the perfect spot for watching nature right outside my window.

The Politics of House Sparrows

My bedroom looks onto the garden and a rundown allotment behind that. We don’t a great deal of large trees around us, but the shrubs and bushes provide perfect cover for small birds. The clematis along the back fence of the garden houses a blackbird nest and the large trailing bush above the gate provides shelter for a sizeable flock of sparrows throughout the year. I know they’re little brown jobs and I know we see them in what seems like every street-side hedge, but I think there’s a lot that can be said for the humble house sparrow.

A female house sparrow (not my photo)

I am fascinated by the conversations between the sparrows. I’m not sure how many pairs there are in my front garden, but I’m estimating that at least 25 birds live there. I listened to the various chirps and whirrs they shout to each other, and I am almost certain I can tell the difference between a content sparrow and a pissed-off sparrow. I also admire how inquisitive they are. On multiple occasions I have sat in the garden with a few birds sat on the fence near me, cocking their heads and trying to figure me out.

As I am sat here now, I can hear so much bird song. Living in a seaside town, I can hear the dissonant drone of herring gulls; there’s a pair of pigeons and a pair of collared doves cooing, one pair on my roof and one on my neighbours’; starlings whizzing on almost every aerial; blue tits chirping in the desolate allotment behind the house, and of course, the chatter of house sparrows in the bushes.

One bird that I hear often as it flies over the garden, but have yet to drop in on my feeding station, is the goldfinch. I’m always captivated by the goldfinch’s colourful plumage and mellifluous song, upbeat and tuneful. I have put the niger seed out, a feeder of specific ‘finch-mix’, and I occasionally play goldfinch sounds from my phone to try and charm a charm. It hasn’t worked a charm. As is the nature of birding, I guess getting the goldfinches on the feeder will be a waiting game.

A goldfinch (not my photo)

The Might of Wrens

My favourite moment of the day is opening my window first-thing to an aubade of birdsong. The blackbirds, sparrows, starlings, pigeons, blue tits, all calling at once. By far my favourite song to have in my garden is that of the wren. I’ve been in love with wrens since reading Stephen Moss’s The Wren at the start of the year, and have been searching for them in the undergrowth since. I couldn’t believe how incredible these tiny birds are, from their initiative to huddle up in the cold; the pickiness of the female when it comes to nesting; the strength of the males to call for hours on end; and their confrontational characters, despite their size.

I hadn’t seen a wren in my garden until one morning in early April. I watched a small flock of sparrows in the flower pots, taking bits of straw I had put out for their nesting material, and half a dozen starlings hopping around the grass in search of leather backs. But out of the corner of my eye I saw movement in the flowerbed. It was a wren, and to my amusement it was putting all 5g of its body weight into pulling off a thick branch of the clematis, likely for nesting material. It then skulked for a bit before shooting up to the top of the fence and belting an impossibly-loud series of trills. I was amazed. In my almost-20 years of life, I don’t think I’ve ever realised that the wren could sound like that. I haven’t seen a wren in the garden since, but I’m holding out hope that I will be lucky enough to witness the male wren’s solo again. 

A singing wren (not my photo)

Making a garden reserve

At the start of lockdown I bought a feeding station and spent ages tying it to a fence post, rather than putting it in the ground, so that birds flying over can see it. My goal was and still is, to attract as many birds as possible - I don’t mind if it is hogged by starlings or solely serving sparrows, so long as I get birds utilising my garden. Although contributing to the wide-scale conservation of birds and eventually educating others is my end-goal, my passion from a young age has been to connect with nature on a small scale. Simply putting up four feeders and a bird bath has been incredibly rewarding and I can track how effective the small effort is from my bedroom window. I have noticed more species, common species albeit, but my goal of getting the birds in is certainly being achieved. I have learned so much from doing it: bird behaviour, calls and even what times of day the birds are most active.

The bird feeder has also provided me with endless entertainment too. Sparrow fights, dunnocks hoovering up the crumbs below the starlings that decimate the fat balls and the jackdaw nesting on my roof, who seems to inhale the food. Yesterday the jackdaw landed on the feeder adjacent to me and, to its dismay, found two empty fat ball feeders. I am sure that he purposefully looked me straight in the eye with utter disgust, to which I replied aloud “it’s your own fault there’s no food left, you greedy bird.”

Lockdown Takeaway

If lockdown has taught me anything, except that I can have all the time in the world and still won’t read James Joyce, it’s that after this period of isolation has ended we can never again neglect the beauty that exists on our doorsteps.