The birds have been well fed in our garden for several years though\u00a0protection from pests is a constant battle. The hanging seed container gets unwanted visitors like squirrels and yesterday a baby mouse had climbed up the post around 10am and was brazenly\u00a0eating sunflower seeds. The seed tray on the ground also gets squirrels but more recently woodpigeons. These are persistent and last night there were 3 of them, one on each neighbours roof and ours. Smaller birds have no chance as they buzz them or just push them out. Now I’ve got a cover that goes over the seedtray when they arrive. It takes the fun out of it as the visiting small birds are getting fewer. The squirrels have got fewer as well and I wondered if someone was relocating them. After seeing the mouse\u00a0hygiene steps are being put into place.<\/p>\n
The woodpigeon is a very plump bird with a small head and its wings are noisy in flight. They’re very aggressive between themselves and have frequent wing flapping battles. The male is\u00a0quick to make amorous bowing and rotating movements to any female but when it comes to food the male pushes the female out till he’s finished. Despite this aggression they’re\u00a0shy with humans and leave at the smallest movement, but\u00a0soon come back.\u00a0 When they are nervous they make a small sideways edging movements that get bigger till they decide to go. They always completely clean all the seeds and any very small bits and will try to swallow pieces of bread that are far too big.\u00a0Brassicas and other gardeners delights are favourites\u00a0and\u00a0young cabbage can be decimated.\u00a0 Their drinking habits are unusual for a bird as they are able to suck\u00a0whereas most birds collect water in their beaks and tip their heads back. As well as flying,\u00a0walking is one of their activities enabling them to investigate every area of the garden. Despite their size they get into tight positions and will repeatedly try to get to unattainable food. They have a range of sounds from a low grunt to loud cooing.\u00a0 They hide in trees and find different stealthy ways to approach protected areas. Although a problem they’re\u00a0amusing and interesting birds.\u00a0 It’s still raining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The birds have been well fed in our garden for several years though\u00a0protection from pests is a constant battle. The hanging seed container gets unwanted visitors like squirrels and yesterday a baby mouse had climbed up the post around 10am and was brazenly\u00a0eating sunflower seeds. The seed tray on the ground also gets squirrels but … Continue reading “Nature: 3 woodpigeons, 1 squirrel, 1 mouse”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPtnz-6a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":393,"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madeinpreston.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}