The injured blue tit

I have been pottering rather than busy today. I started to sort out the pictures from yesterday's birthday bash, and have sent a few to Camilla already. Whilst eating a boiled egg on toast for lunch I enjoyed sitting and gazing out over the garden patio and noticed the birds were out and about in some numbers.

I have been considering adding a new bracket from which to hang bird feeders closer to the house, but which would still afford the birds protection from the numerous cats. I found a couple of brackets in the cabin and lined them up and realised that they would work well and I might be able to fix them tomorrow. I then filled up the hanging feeders with sunflower seeds and moved them slightly higher up in the rhus tree so that they would catch the light from the setting sun.

I was surprised that it wasn't very cold and so I got my camera out and moved the patio table so i could sit looking at the existing feeders so that I wasn't too obvious to the birds. It paid off as I managed to see several species I hadn't noticed for some months including a couple of goldfinches, a bullfinch, chaffinch, blue tits, long tail tits and of course the robins. A buzzard rose from behind the big sycamore at the bottom of the garden and circled up into the heights. Crows and pigeons were quite numerous, and a few magpies squawked about. But the best observation was of a nuthatch which came to the feeding tray which I had specially filled with peanuts, suet and sunflowers to see which birds wanted what specific food.

I love nuthatches and we usually have at least one pair nesting in a large tree on the boundary between our garden and the sloping meadows behind us which drop steeply down to the stream. But I hadn't seen any since the early summer so I'm delighted they are not lost to us.

There is one bird that I have noticed in the last few days because it is obviously injured. It cannot land properly, or stand, but instead has to sit on flat surfaces as much as possible, which makes it rather vulnerable. I first saw it last week and wondered why it was flapping its wings all the time when it was at the hanging bird feeders, and also when it was on a small branch of the tree after it had grabbed a seed, it was flapping its wings to stay upright.

I saw the bird today crash landing on the roof of the cabin and I thought I'd try to film it to see if I could observe any damage to its body. I also had this bird in mind when I filled the feeder tray, as I thought it could feed more easily from it. So I was very pleased to see it here and get this picture. I also noticed in another picture of it flying, that I can see at least one leg, so possibly they have been broken. Anyway this picture proves it is happy to sit in the tray and stuff its face with food, and that it can fly away safely. So I must get another tray to hang from the new bracket up by the house, where the cats cannot possibly reach. Then it will have a safe place to feed and we can check on both its food supply and health.


I have added a few pictures here of other birds I saw today.