Summary of April 2011
April has been remarkably dry and warm. The Met Office described it this way –
“With high pressure influencing the weather for most of the month, it was much warmer, drier and sunnier than normal. The mean temperature was 4.0 °C above the 1971–2000 average and it was the warmest April in the series from 1910, being 0.6 °C warmer than April 2007 (now ranked second). In central England, it was the warmest April for over 350 years.”
The month ended with sunny weather but very high winds which may have caused some of our regular garden visitors to lie low for a while.
In the back garden we had a Robin (or possibly two) and a Blackbird coming to the feeding table obviously collecting food for newly hatched young. Unfortunately we have not seen any sign of these young and this may be due to an ongoing problem with our neighbour’s new cat which seems to want to include our garden as part of its territory. Disappointingly it has taken to hiding in the plants trying to catch birds either bathing or feeding. This got to the extreme that one day I chased it away eight times. We have lost patience with it and have now had to resort to putting lots of wire mesh up around the back gate and fence in order to try to deter it from coming into our garden. The war continues and at this point we are not sure who is going to win. It has had the negative effect of putting off some of our visiting birds so it is all very annoying especially since one of the Blackbirds had got so confiding that it would walk along the wall by the kitchen demanding more food – but not anymore.
The Dunnocks still seem to be happy to dodge around the garden though and this month we have had the odd Coal Tit visit our window box looking for peanuts as well as a couple of Blue Tits and Great Tits. Sometimes we have a Chaffinch bobbing around and we have four Goldfinches pretty much all the time. This is actually many fewer than in previous years so the hard winter may have reduced their numbers somewhat. We have seen the arrival in our garden of this years Starlings – sometimes as many as four or five but usually just a couple. As ever we have a couple of Wood Pigeons and Collared Doves – the latter not too frequent but the former constantly.
We have put up our camera nest box in the same place as we had Blue Tits breeding last year (in a Birch log box attached to the side of the chimney breast about 14 feet up) and although we have seen a Blue Tit looking into it a few times, as yet nothing has chosen to nest there – yet !
Out in the wider environs of Chorlton there are small local outcrops of House Sparrows and over by Jackson’s Boat the Swallows arrived and we saw a Willow Warbler over there too and heard lots of Chiffchaffs.
Our days out this month (some with the birding group and some on our own have included Tatton Park, Inner Marsh Farm, Parkgate, Etherow Country Park, Marbury Country Park and Point of Ayr.