Spinkyblurb

I've counted lots of fledglings this summer, it feels like it has been a good year and the parent birds have done an amazing job, so here are some figures and photos (click on them to enlarge) to celebrate it. Blue Tit fledglings exploring the trees or chasing parents! Let's start in the garden:  I always do regular bird counts in the garden and this year I decided to keep a tally of fledglings, as best I could! See the table below for peak counts of each species & estimates of total fledglings.  As you can see Blackbirds were the real stars, working so hard with a peak count of eight. It wasn't all plain sailing, as a few had feather issues which hampered their progression, and they seemed particularly dependent on my garden for mealworms. One I named Rumpy as he lost so many feathers in that area, and there was another with a weird thing going on on its throat (see photo)! It was nice to see the early broods still visiting the garden as they tu