The Redwings are still visiting constantly throughout the day, particularly in the morning which is as you would expect. Birds are quite hungry in the mornings after long hours of darkness and in a hurry to feed at first light. I have done a quick internet search to try and find the nutritional value of holly and discovered that holly berries are poisonous to humans which was a surprise. They also contain a large percentage of caffeine, perhaps this is why birds seem so obsessed with them? At the moment though, the apple pieces seem to be more attractive than the berries. There has been some problems with a near neighbors horrible hairy grey cat, I have watched it stalking the birds on a couple of occasions and I am a little worried that it may eventually be successful. So far so good and whenever I see it in my garden I chase it away, it is intelligent enough to know that - to say the least - we are not friends! Nothing against cats, more about irresponsible cat owners. Several million British Birds predated by domestic cats every year, one of the reasons we don't have as many birds in gardens as we used to.
It's not every year that we get Redwings in the garden so I have been making the best of the opportunity. I am very fond of them, very dapper and handsome birds. I have been trying to separate individuals and to be honest I haven't been finding it all that easy and I am only guessing at the age of those I have photographed. Is this a 2017 bred bird for example. The light edges to wing feathers would seem to suggest this.
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