Garden Guests


Just a quickie to note two new regular visitors to our back garden.

Bought a new birdtable recently after the last one finally gave up the ghost last winter. And were looking forward to the usual array of interesting small birds as well as the annoying magpies and assorted crows, pigeons etc.

But one of the first visitors this year has been the gentleman (or perhaps lady... haven't got close enough to work out which) pictured here. He was followed a few days later by a jay, who has been too fast moving to get a decent photo, but is a truly beautiful beastie. Being a member of the crow family he's fairly smart as well, so between our two new guests they are making fairly short work of the food we had left out for the smaller birds.

I post this today because I read a news story today from the RSPB recommending that you dust your nuts with chilli powder(!?) to keep squirrels at bay. Apparently this has no effect on small birds but really annoys the squirrels. Don't know whether it is effective against Jays, but regardless of that I don't think we'll be doing that just yet. They are still a novelty and a joy to behold.

But when is it that something amazing and beautiful, first becomes commonplace and then an annoyance?

We'll see how long it will take with our new garden guests.

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