Llanelli Naturalists Newsletter - November 2005 - No 72
Ian Morgan

I was reading an old favourite of mine the other day – ‘The Shell Bird Book’, by James Fisher, first published in 1966 and a good source of diverse information relating to birds.  The section summarising, for example, rare birds is, of course, hopelessly outdated by now – but that is part of the thrill of the book, reading how precarious a hold many breeding species had in the UK in those days.

Other perhaps more domestic changes become self-evident too: the feeding habits of birds in our gardens.  This was brought home to me last winter when the steady trickle of long tailed tits that punctually passed through my garden every afternoon, started feeding at my peanut basket, with no less than 9 birds gorging themselves at one go.  The Shell Bird Book states that this species only showed up at feeders ‘in extreme weather’, so habits must have changed.  I have even had robins clumsily feeding at such baskets – again something I would not have seen years ago.

Gone however, are the big parties of house sparrows or the hordes of starlings that used to be unwelcome, domineering guests at bird feeders 40 years ago.  Indeed, rather wistfully, I now enjoy seeing the tiny resident flock of tame starlings that have made the Asda car park their home.