Spotting young birds in the garden

Juvenile great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)

In May and June there have been plenty of baby birds in the garden and I have been trying to capture them. Mostly I have been disappointed. My pictures are rubbish, really. But I felt I wanted to share them just to prove the variety of species we have breeding in our backyard.

The first spot of the year was a baby starling (Sturnus vulgaris) – the starling pack visit our bird table only when they have young ‘uns, thank goodness!

Young starling (Sturnus vulgaris), May 17

Grown-up starling, May 17

I have written about starlings before – and taken better pictures of them…
Ruffians in star-spangled jackets (May 2010)

Those pesky starlings (May 2011)

The light in a baby starling’s eye (May 2012)

Later the same day there was a racket from three baby great tits (Parus major) clamouring to be fed. I’ve just realised I have been calling all these birds “babies”. Of course they are not fluffy little chicks, so I apologise. We have so much in the way of tree and shrub cover in our garden that the young birds aren’t brought out by their parents until they are at least toddlers. Until then the parents take suet away in their beaks from the bird table to feed them in private.

Great tits (Parus major) on May 17

All grown up now – a young great tit feeding itself on June 20

There were other tit species, too…

Young coal tit (Periparus ater) on May 31

A worn-out adult coal tit on top of a pine on May 31

We usually have many blue tits but they don’t seem quite as numerous this year and I saw them much later than the great tits and coal tits.

Young blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus or Parus caeruleus) on June 14

A couple of young blue tits on the bird suet

Young robin (Erithacus rubecula) on June 19 – they always look so aggressive

I think this blackbird (Turdus merula) is a juvenile by its reddish colour, but it’s not a really young one

The real success this year has been the great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major). We often have one around in the garden, and most years we see a juvenile with a big splash of orange-red on top of its head. But this year we have TWO youngsters.

Not a very good picture, but here are the two young woodpeckers with their father on June 10

What sharp beaks they have!

Red-topped juvenile great spotted woodpecker on the fence

It always seems to be the father woodpecker doing the feeding. You can tell it’s a male by the red on the back of its head. The female has only black and white on its head. I have seen females only rarely.

Young woodpecker on the bird bath

Around the time I first noticed the two young woodpeckers I was dismayed to find a few small feathers, one pictured below, the others downy, in the yard. I feared one of the birds had been caught by a cat, but was pleased to see the two red-tops were still around next day.

This looks like a spotted woodpecker feather to me

Cats are a bit of a worry in our garden. We don’t own one, but those belonging to neighbours, as well as a motley and ever-changing collection of feral cats from far and wide, treat our garden as a playground. I haven’t seen any casualties lately, so I just hope the cats are too lazy, although they half-heartedly run at squirrels sometimes. Here are a few of the regulars…

A pretty cat, and quite young, I think…

This one has strange colouring…

This is what I would call a “fat cat” – and it keeps on sleeping on my herb garden and flattening everything

I have taken a couple of pictures of adult birds, too, so I might as well throw them in here…

Song thrush (Turdus philomelos) eating the last few Mahonia berries

For comparison, this is a mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus) I spotted in Bute Park, Cardiff, in May – bigger, paler, with rounder spots than a song thrush

Then there are the birds I have NOT captured. I saw a young nuthatch (Sitta europaea), paler than its parents, and then, just once, I saw what I think was a young treecreeper (Certhia familiaris). I haven’t seen a treecreeper in the garden for years. It was upside-down on the bird suet and I stupidly ran for my camera before I had watched it properly and absorbed it, to make sure I knew what it was. Of course by the time I returned it was gone. I just remember spots and speckles. It might even have been an adult treecreeper, as they are speckled, too. Now I will probably never know…

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