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Guest Ditch_Shitter

Nuthatch?! :o I'm green with envy, Moll! That has to be one of the Most attractive birds we can hope for, no? I saw a Tree Creeper on my ground a short while back - nothing to do with my feeders, obviously - but I'd be ecstatic to get a 'Hatch. Never had woodies yet either.

 

Tell you what; I'll do you my Siskins for your Nuthatch. And how about some Cuckoo's for the 'Peckers? :D

 

Have you any nest boxes up? Both those two are said to need something a little bit special, for the best shot at attracting them.

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Guest MOLLY

Ive just started with the wild birds Ditch, so feeding them is as far as it goes at the mo. I am surrounded on 2 sides by woods so i presume this is why i get so many different types.

The nuthatch was just feeding whilst i was standing near it...very little fear then went and had a drink from the pond and off he went. The woodpeckers screech and fly away if they see me move at the window but they have just started to come into the garden so i hope they will calm down like all the others.

Ive planted wild flowers to attract the insects, a pond for the amphibians, so any further hints and tips for the birds would be greatly appretiated :yes:

Already spotted Siskins here 8.4.06, so your gonna have to do better than that :D

MOLL.

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Guest Ditch_Shitter

" Already spotted Siskins here 8.4.06, so your gonna have to do better than that :D "

 

 

Doing my best, Moll! Great to see you keep a Log too! I do, but I don't bother to date it. Perhaps I should?

 

Anyway, you 'spotted' your Siskins; But did you manage to get within five feet of them?! :o

 

 

 

Siskin Family

 

:yahoo:

 

 

 

Great Tit

 

Yep: I'm a creepy f**ka! Even without that gorgeous jacket IanB's showing us! :tongue2:

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Guest MOLLY

Beaten with the Siskin, but i can match your tit with my blue tit ;)

 

 

 

Ive just been looking through my book, i noticed the woodpecker has a red head, I thought the great spotted only had a small bit at the back? So what is it please?

 

 

 

MOLL.

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Guest Ditch_Shitter
Ive just been looking through my book, i noticed the woodpecker has a red head, I thought the great spotted only had a small bit at the back? So what is it please?

 

MOLL.

 

 

Haven't seen your tit - and / or what ever the second shot is yet, Moll. 56K's a nightmare! :( (Took so long because I was outside getting some work done, btw) But your 'pecker? That's just a young one. They lose it as they get older ..... just like all the rest of us! :laugh:

 

The other one, the Lesser Spotted is everything it's name suggests. Lesser spotted, as in seldom seen. And so lesser that it could almost be mistaken for a big moth! They really are That tiny! :icon_eek:

 

Look out for those as you go through the deciduous and mixed woodlands. Spot a tit flock and you may get lucky and find the elusive, black and white moth amongst them :)

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Guest Ditch_Shitter

Aha! I now see you're showing us your Great Tits too, Moll? Must say, the only thing I ever got flocking to my fat balls, when I had them out, was Starlings. The birds Do love fat balls though, eh?

 

 

 

 

It's no good! I Had To do that routine - the lads would have expected it. But that's quite enough of the infantile stuff, eh? :rolleyes:

 

Anyway, come on; That Bluey's not bad, but by christ, you can see the bloody pupils on my Great! Have to do better than that, Moll! :tongue2:

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Guest MOLLY
Anyway, come on; That Bluey's not bad, but by christ, you can see the bloody pupils on my Great! Have to do better than that, Moll! :tongue2:
<_< mmm, its gonna be hard with my little digi, but let the games commence...lol.

 

My tits alright ;) but i do prefer the coal tits, back to my roots if you like.

MOLL.

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Guest Ditch_Shitter

I have one of the Sony CybetShot's, Molly. It's obviously a cracking little camera, but I'm only now sorting out even a third of its functions. Without going into a boring advert mode for these things; It is only the size of a packet of 20 fags - and that's when it's inside it's well padded little case that I bought it! - so it's simply always there, right on my hip, where ever I go :)

 

Anyway, Games Commence? I think the game's long since commenced, with some of the other people on this board. And they're putting you and I both to shame!

 

This year, I watched the Great Tits, Chaffinches, Goldfinches, Blue Tits and a Willow Warbler helping themselves to great hunks of the donkey fur I brushed out and stuck strategically in the hedges here abouts. I noted their directions of return and promised myself I'd locate the nests and, where practicable without doing wrong, get shots.

 

Nothing! Like, ok, I'm an extremely busy man at that time of year and really have more pressing things than sneaking around looking for birds nests. But at least the one shot of a clutch of eggs would have been nice :( In fact, I had those Chaffie's down to about five square feet of hedge. Could I spot that bloody nest though?! Sods!

 

But my piece de resistance though, my own true crowning glory to myself Will be the Spotted Flycatcher! :o I want to snap one of those so badly it hurts!

 

Hurt? It may well yet bloody kill me! I've spied on them tirlessly - in a casual, given a moment sort of way :unsure: - and have got them in or around one side of the old Dutch Barn here. Trouble is, that damn thing's a tragedy waiting to take place! If there's so much as a light breeze, you won't be catching me beneath it. And as for climbing around in there? No F***ing Way! And, of course; These ones haven't read the book! Supposed to nest on a tiny ledge, at about six foot? My ones appear to be somewhere or other about twenty foot up in the eaves! And I Ain't going there! :no:

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Guest MOLLY

Sony cybershot....me too :good: Although mine is rather old and bashed now, the lens doesnt shut anymore :blink: The thing is i forget to take it anywhere with me, and the times i do remember i start to look for things to take piccies of, and you what what happens when you start to do that......you see NOWT. So my best piccies have been taken from the window, not that i am complaining, it means the best wildlife is right here in my garden :D

Yes some of the people on here have the best equipment going, i am saving hard for a new camera, but im afraid i wont be able to figure it out when i get it, they do sound rather complicated when you hear people on here describing how to use them. I just want a camera i can pick up and click when i see something, dont want to have to push this button, move that lens etc, the subject would have probably made a dash for cover by then :wacko:

I must try to make more of an effort though!

MOLL.

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Guest Ditch_Shitter

You too have a Cyber Shot??? :icon_eek: What a coincidence!

 

Ok, Moll; Mine's the DSC - T3. I honestly only know that because I happen to have the manual right here beside me - another fluke!

 

I know they've brought out another one, since my one (Actually said, by the salesman, not to be as good as this model?) And that there's seemingly quite a range of cameras they call Cyber Shot's too? This is a dinky little silver thing that gets lost in my hands and, yes, has more bloody functions than a theme pub. But it certainly does more than I could ask of any camera.

 

Bit like differant OS's, I can't tell what you might see when you fiddle with your one. But I find PROGRAMME to be that fair bit better than AUTO, to be honest. It allows the Zoom function and that gives me the lee way one might expect from a hulking great Canon SLR.

 

Flash is still yet a complete f***ing mystery to me. I get over that by simply trying to snatch shots in Every mode available! :laugh: But, as I only tend to use that for moths, indoors, it doesn't really matter.

 

Aside from that? I just click away like a man posessed, usually on a variety of haphazardly picked at settings. I don't necasserily have a bloody clue what I'm doing, half the time. I just 'shoot from the hip' then, at the end of each day, come in here and sort through the images I've captured. There's always a few that make me cringe. But I know then that I'd have been sick to the stomach if I hadn't tried, tried, tried again on those differant settings.

 

Give enough monkeys enough type writers ....! ;)

 

If you still have the Manual - or can dig it out of Google? - then it may well yet pay to sit down with a cuppa and just browse through it now and then. A little bit at a time. May pick up some hitherto unrealised hints that way ...? :)

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Guest Ditch_Shitter
Has been good enough to get me hooked :)

 

 

Yep. I reckon, if I'd read that review, I'd have given a lot of consideration to that camera myself, when I was after my first one. As it turned out, I bought a hulking great thing, like half a brick! :icon_eek: That too had the in / out lens though and that's what ballsed it. I simply woke up one morning and found the lens wouldn't in or out. I threw it in the bin. That hurt!

 

Personaly, I came by the T3 on the reccomendation of somebody who used one in a professional capacity - we had the same sort of uses in mind - and have never regretted it. I've had it a year or two now. Use it practically every day and it's never so much as made me imagine anything ever going wrong with it.

 

I'd be happy to suggest, Moll, that should you ever come to feeling like taking the plunge, the T3 is well worth consideration. Despite the prices seen on the usual sites, I actually picked mine up at the local Sony store for far closer to the two hundred mark than the pushing three we see mentioned. So, in fact, it's actually a cheap camera, considering its quality.

 

Anyway, this is starting to sound like a Vote for Sony page. But at least we both agree they're a good camera. Better get off the subject though before the big boys wade in with their grands worths of all singing, all dancing, really professional gizmo's and all hell breaks loose! :laugh: Here's a link to what looks a very user friendly review site though - just in case: Sony DSC - T3

 

And now, back on topic, I really should get on and clear my work, both on here and off, as I need to get into town and buy some more bird feed. I got a new, RSPB Feeder the other day. Works like hell and the birds emptied it in no time. Sadly, I was already low on feed and they wiped me out! One of these days I promise myself I'll invest in one of those Really Big Feeders they do. Ones that hold like half a sack of feed at one time and need a steel scaffold to support their immense weight :laugh:

 

Incidentally; A woman local to me, english woman, throws down great handfulls of flaked oats ('Porridge', basically) and attracts such swarms of Chaffinches as I've never seen. As she points out; That stuff's cheaper than chips - though I'd personally wonder at the nutritional value of it. May be just packing the birds out with ... well ..... Packing!

 

However, I wouldn't suggest anyone going down that road. She also - but due to the fact that she's also the most sluvvanly wretch I've ever encountered - has The Most diabolical Rat infestation I've ever come across! Over here, see, we pay for our refuse collection. Quite liturally by the bag. This one considers she has better things to spend her money on. So she simply throws Everything into a shed, next to her kitchen door! Has done for years :sick: She has a pack of dogs she never picks up behind either. I guess you can imagine the word that's on my lips, eh?

 

Reason I mention this is because I'm just so sick and tired of hearing the old trotter that, " If you feed the birds, you'll get rats! ". No. If you're bone idle and a slut in every aspect of your existance, Then you'll get rats, if you feed the birds. Feeding the birds just means you're giving a free hand out to the rats you'd have anyway. Don't you agree? ;)

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Guest MOLLY

I think it is when people throw out table scraps for the birds that they tend to get rats...i wish i could :laugh::laugh: If i put table scraps out i think the big dogs would have the feeder bent in half to get the food :rolleyes:

Proper bird feeders and feed i wouldnt have thought would attract any, certainly not in great numbers and as you said, they would have been there 1st anyway.

 

Im after one of those 'big boy toy' cameras im afraid :unsure: Because i would love to be able to get action shots and with the little digi types it is very hit and miss.

 

Now what about nesting boxes?

MOLL.

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Guest Ditch_Shitter

Urban rats, used to making a fat living off the garbage people throw in the gutter, will gravitate towards 'Table Scraps', Moll. Out here, they live on the bog all summer - feeding on seeds and natural grains - then move into the buildings, in winter, to share the 'stocks feed. Thus the grain, seed and nuts I put out for the birds are a rat magnet in themselves :(

 

Never mind. It's my business to deal with such incursions, what ever the season, so my land is ring fenced and ready. They come ~ They die. Simple.

 

 

 

Now what about nesting boxes?

 

 

 

Go ahead; Make My Day! :D You, Moll, are almost perfect! The only fly in the ointment is that young Great Spotted. That means the buggers have already found somewhere to nest. And it works, obviously. However, that young bird, if he makes it, will also be looking for a suitable site. Same, possibly, goes for any brood from that Nuthatch. This is where we might be able to help eachother out ~ and the birds, to boot :good:

 

Fact is; Nest boxes are a bit of a fasination of mine. Now, THE recognised source of information of the subject is the long standing, multi updated, BTO booklet. However, I spotted a ~ what I consider ~ flawed instruction in there. I righted it and now yearn to put my own, 'Improved' hypothesis to the test.

 

I haven't had time, or reason, to consider this for a few years now. But as you've mentioned it? Why not? So; If you're willing? I'd like to explain my ideas to you and, maybe, you can put them into practice, thus testing my dearly cherished theories?

 

It's all about the way the Spots - and, perhaps, to a degree (?) the Nuthatch prefers his potential nest sites. The BTO book suggests packing the correctly sized nest box with polystyrene. Idea being that the bird has a need to excavate his own 'Rotten piece of wood' somewhat.

 

Well, as soon as I read this, I had visions of the woodland awash with awfull, round pellets of poly, blowing in the wind and generally making a tip of the place. It'd look bloody awful. Be totally unntaural and would take an entire era or three to ever 'Biodegrade'. Hardly hand in hand then with the mentallity of those of us who would do our bit for wildlife, eh? But I have a better idea - I feel. If you're up for it, maybe you could be my Champion and give it a spin; You having the birds ready and waiting, as it were.

 

What do you think? I can provide the BTO plans, for the box. Then I can tell you how to replace that awful poly and maybe the birds will act as final judges :)

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