Re: First fledgling seen in the garden 2012 - please add yours

I'm getting exceedingly jealous of all these youngsters (and the excellent pictures) - only seen one set of ducklings so far and 3 Lapwing chicks. The one Long Tailed Tit nest I found has been vacated between my visits, so i even missed out on those. I sadly think that the coots nest right outside the hide at Coombe Hill Nature reserve that I have been watching will not have survived the recent flooding.

Have watched the video TeeJay and it is absolutely fascinating. What a shame you might miss them leaving home.

Sorry to hear that you are not having much luck as yet in seeing any youngsters Bob.  Keep your chin up; hopefully patience will pay off eventually. Am not meaning to rub salt in the wounds but your mention of ducklings reminded me that I got a shot of some a few weeks back. If you can bear to look at them, here they are!!!

grrrrrr!!!

My first baby I think - a Dunnock - sat on the fence looking very wistful.

Lovely wee Dunnock. Thanks for sharing.

First sightings in our garden (May 8, 2012) of a fledgling Starling and fledgling Blue-Tit. We have also had some more fledgling Robins arrive so have added a picture of 2 together which I thought was cute. 

Oooh - that is an unusual photo - two baby robins! Well done on capturing that.

Thank you GeoDave.

Here is another new arrival that some would probably prefer not to see!!!

I'm a big softie when it comes to Squirrels and just haven't got the heart to shoo them away and there is plenty of food for all. Plus the little birds don't appear to be intimidated by them.  My husband professes not to be keen on squirrels (calls them rats with a pretty tail) and last summer in an attempt to deter them from climbing up the pole he greased it.  However, they managed to outwit his cunning plan and made it to the top which was a hilarious sight to behold. In truth, I suspect my husband finds them as entertaining as I do, but he would hate to admit it! Think he is more worried about the food bill!

I liked the squirrel story as although I like squirrels, they like the expensive sunflower hearts and so I too, greased the poles on the feeders. I used lard and for whatever reason he didn't like the smell so kept running around in circles with his nose in the air sniffing the poles. Eventually he climbed a small silver birch and I thought he was going to attempt a 2 metre leap across to the top of the feeder - but he decided against that. Eventually he decided to leap from the ground to the dish halfway up the pole but failed to make it and slid in a very undignified squirrel-like way down the pole. He ran off with his paws inevitably covered in lard - haven't seen him since! :-)

A few babies have finally arrived in my garden to join the baby Dunnock - apologies for the very poor photos (wrong camera settings and through dirty windows - and it was raining).

A pair of baby sparrows with mum

Greenfinch baby

And another one of the baby Dunnock

There is a baby robin around but I haven't managed a photo yet.

not the best picture quality, as it was taken from the nest box camera

, but thought i'd share -here are our newly hatched blue tits

OMG Scathtiar, that's wonderful!

tiny little pink blobs-i'll see if i can upload a video.

ah done. again not brill picture quality-the photo i edited a little to bring out the colour-enjoy

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