FEEDING STATION

Set up my feeding station with a couple more perches hoping that the birds will kindly line up to have their picture taken.

my bird feeding station

I've been lucky enough so far to have had 35 different species visit my feeders, I also should imagine I've missed the odd rare visitor. 
Although birds will come into a feeding station all year round I find that the busiest times are early spring when the birds a trying to get into peak condition ready for breeding and on freezing days in winter when food is scarce.
Here's some of the more commoner birds that frequent my feeders.

goldfinch

wren

nuthatch

dunnock

female chaffinch

great tit

male chaffinch

It's set up now so lets see what the autumn and winter brings in, something rare or unusual I hope (fingers crossed).

A CREEPING " familiaris "

Whilst watching and taking some pic's of the birds visiting my feeders, this Treecreeper came onto the trunk of a tree at the top end of my rather rough looking wildlife garden. It stayed for a while making it's way up the trunk looking for it's insect food and then dropping back down again to start all over again.

treecreeper

A very pleasant surprise and a new tick for my garden list.

A BOX FOR KES

This female Kestrel turned up this morning which was nice to see, the box next to her was set up by Stephen Carter and myself hoping that we could entice a Kestrel, Jackdaw, Stock Dove or any other hole nester to hopefully give it a go. No luck so far I'm afraid, and the box has taken such a battering off the elements over the last couple of years it might now be uninhabitable.

kestrel with our beaten up box

Other things of note this week were this Chiffchaff, which never comes up this high so must be on the move.

chiffchaff

Also there's still juvenile Stonechat about I think they've had a good year.

juvi stonechat

The swallows are gathering they'll be fattening up before they set off for Africa.

swallows

Most birders now are looking forward to the autumn migration which could blow a surprise or two our way, lets hope so.

THE BARREN LANDS

Went over to Llandegfedd Reservoir today the water levels are that low it looks more like the Gobi desert over there than a reservoir. The birds are so far out I think you'll be needing one of them NASA space telescopes to identify anything on the waters edge.

There were some birds there in the distance.

canada geese and cormorants (I think)

tufted duck (you'll have to take my word for it)

cormorant with grey Heron.

I digiscoped this next Heron pic with my phone.

digiscoped Heron

And I mercilessly cropped this Little Egret 

there's not a lot of pixels in this one

 One of the Rangers that works at Llandegfedd told me that the water levels are not managed by pumping more water into the reservoir (even though there's a pump house on site) they are heavily reliant on the rain fall to bring the water levels back up.
They want to hope it rains pretty soon or we could be watching desert Camels bounding across this barren land.