Birds in the garden

Delighted to see a great tit in the garden this morning.

When I first moved here I didn't see birds in the garden. Some would be in the ash tree that partly overhung it, often they flew over it.

Before I moved here I had an allotment where I used grow some sunflowers each year. I would be down working on the allotment while birds were taking the seeds from the sunflowers. I only ever had one self-sown sunflower. My first year here I had sunflowers and the first time I saw a bird on them was one finch on Christmas Day. The next year there were sunflower seedlings everywhere!

The past few years I have seen birds in the garden more and more frequently, though I put no food out for them. I don't encourage birds directly because of the amount of cats that use the garden.

I was worried that the clearing of my elderly ex-neighbour's garden might impact on the number of birds in mine as I have no shrubs. There has been the occasional magpie and wood pigeon. The sparrows were getting nesting material from the plumes of what's left of my neighbour's pampas grass.

But today there was the great tit. And then a group of 5 sparrows on the beanpoles.