To open the curtains this morning to yet another day of pouring rain, grey skies and gusty winds was rather depressing to say the least. Like all of us at the moment, I long for a dry, crisp day with winter sunshine to lift the spirits and allow me to tackle the soggy mess that is my garden! Don’t get me wrong… I am happy to be out in all sorts of weather and I am rarely put off by a wet day… dressed up in waterproof gear, I can be found outside in most weathers. This prolonged period of such wet weather has meant that there is simply no point in tackling my soggy garden… you can’t sweep sodden leaves and many of the jobs I want to do require the ground to at least stop being waterlogged. Many of us keen photographers have also found this holiday period frustrating with so little light, it makes it difficult to capture much either.
In need of some element of fresh air today, I donned the waterproof gear and set about creating a new ‘Bird Bar’ feeding station to watch as I worked at my PC and to provide some viewing on my live cameras. The patio end of my garden was alive with flitting feathered forms this morning and, having cams on single feeders, means that you don’t really get the full impression of how busy it often is out there.
I had a couple of metal hanging brackets in the shed so decided to set these up along my patio fence so I could mount a series of feeders together and thus, be able to see all of them on one camera. I had a large pizza tray in my hub and these make excellent trays. This one was big enough to bolt two feeders to and trays like this also attract more species as many like to sit on the tray rather than hang on the feeder.
I also have the CJWildlife Peanut butter feeder mounted there, so wanted to try to get that in too!
Using a Gardenature Feeder housing to protect the camera, I mounted it on an old tripod, so I could move it around. After a bit of adjustment, I managed to get a view of all 4 feeders. The birds were queueing up in the trees waiting for me to go inside and by the time I got back up to my PC, they were on them.
Just this afternoon, in the last hour, I have had the following visit:
Blue tit
Coal tit
Great tit
Robin
House sparrow (unusual visitor here)
Dunnock
Nuthatch
Great spotted woodpecker
Goldfinch
My feather visitors never fail to cheer me up . If you are stuck at home, inside, on another dreary rainy day, why not grab a cuppa and have a couple of minutes watching my cams to see what visits. Even better, set up your own feeding station.. whatever the weather, these visitors will always brighten the dullest of days!