disaster!

[sweep]

after watching a family of blackbirds raise their chicks for a few days in my garden (keeping any cats out and confining my own to barracks). i think there were 3 that i could see and they were nearly ready for off, starting to fly in bursts. last night i heard a noise and looked out from upstairs. a gull had lifted one of the chicks from the border and swallowed it whole. no parents there at the time or they might have seen it off!
feel terrible i couldn't help the poor chick.

[highland red]

after watching a family of blackbirds raise their chicks for a few days in my garden (keeping any cats out and confining my own to barracks). i think there were 3 that i could see and they were nearly ready for off, starting to fly in bursts. last night i heard a noise and looked out from upstairs. a gull had lifted one of the chicks from the border and swallowed it whole. no parents there at the time or they might have seen it off!
feel terrible i couldn't help the poor chick.

It really is a cruel world sometimes. We have been getting aggressive Jackdaws attacking the wee birds on the bird table, and I've been trying to shoo them off before they kill one: but you can't be there all the time.

I opened the blinds this morning to find that the Jackdaws had Got two Niger feeders off their brackets and had managed to wrestle the integral peanut feeder off its place.