This is a Dunnock. They used to be called Hedge Sparrows but they are not like sparrows at all except for their brown and grey colouring. They have quite a bright jangling song and search for food mainly on the ground under hedges and shrubs.
This post will be of more photos of birds I saw this summer and autumn in my garden. We are very lucky to have so many types of bird visiting.
The dunnock realised I was looking at it and so looked at me.
It then tried to edge behind the hawthorn leaf to hide.
A Green Woodpecker also known as a Yaffle because of its laughing call. This bird is a juvenile as it hasn’t got its full green plumage yet. I hardly ever see these birds in trees. They love ants and ants’ eggs I am pleased to say, and are very welcome in our garden which is ‘ant city’.
They are such attractive birds with their black masks and cherry-red, olive-green, grey-green and primrose-yellow plumage.
I have re-posted this photo of a female pheasant to show how drab they are compared with the males. Their feathers are so good at blending in with grasses which is very useful at nesting-time.
A Stock Dove
A Swallow – one of our summer visitors. I miss them very much when they fly south for the winter. They left very early this year because we had such a cool August.
Swallow
Another re-post of Black-headed Seagulls in the field behind our house. These were losing their summer plumage. During the winter they don’t have a black head only a black spot on the side of the head. And it isn’t black but dark brown!
A Buzzard flying over our house. Buzzards have returned to East Anglia in the last few years having been absent for a very long time.
I must apologise for the quality of the next photograph. I am including it because I am so pleased and excited to have seen this bird at all, let alone seeing it in my garden. It decided to perch in a very shaded part of the garden by the pond and I couldn’t focus on it at all.
The orange and blue bird with white throat and neck patch is a Kingfisher
A Suffolk Lane 