How Many Nuthatch Visit A Garden?

This autumn's ringing in Jerry and Barbara's woodland edge garden at Silverdale has thrown up some interesting findings. With well stocked feeders close to the house they can easily observe all the visiting birds. The most Nuthatch's they usually see is three at once occasionally, but usually just two. Kevin Briggs  has started a RAS on Nuthatch this year with a colour ringing scheme. Since mid September we have  colour ringed 11 Nuthatch in the garden. Over this past week Barbara has seen nine of these birds visiting regularly . She has also seen two unringed birds together and a ringed but not colour ringed bird making12  birds visiting regularly  and  two others occasionally making at least 14 birds in all. Will be interesting to see  what happens over the  winter and into spring. Last spring one pair nested in the garden.

The  abundance of Coal tits this autumn is well shown by our latest catch in the garden we caught  19 but the scarcity of Blue Tits is shown by  a catch of only 13. Last year a little later we caught 29 Blue Tits and 19 Coal Tits. The scarcity of Blue Tits following a disastrous breeding season is being commented on by many observers.

John