best spot ever!

[gnu]

Hi Ive just seen today the most birds in my garden ever, Robin, Great tits, Blue tit, wood pigeon, Coal tit and I think long tailled tits.
I had a feeding station up and running for 4 months and never really seen anything using any of the feeders except grey squirrels.

Happy New Year to all

Paul

[wildone]

I believe there is a saying about it coming to him who waits. Obviously your patience has paid off. Hopefully this is the start of a garden full of birds. If you can take up some of nightshade's ideas for New Year Resolutuions you may be able to encourage more than birds. How about butterflies and other insects. Whatever, enjoy the nature that visits your garden as well as in the great outdoors.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to you and all who visit WAB.

Winnie

[Helen]

Hi Paul, and welcome to the forum.

Good news about the birds visiting in the garden, I've always said, the most important thing to have when trying to attract birds into the garden is patience. Yours has obviously paid off

[pheonix]

actually i think youve hit on something there sometimes its not only the rare individuals that you see once in a lifetime that are really memorable, it can be an amazing specticle of various more common wildlife.

over this holiday i went up to stoke to visit some family including an aunt, she has a tiny gargen but puts out more bird food than she does for her family and pets! she always has a lot of visitors but i was amazed at how many were visting over those couple of days, possibly because of the cold snap. there were proberbly always at least twenty birds at one time of various species, but at one point i saw at least 15 bluetis together!! and cnsidering her garden is only about 8mx8m it was amazing. will hopefully put in som photos soon!

[nightshade]

everything comes to he who waits,but god helps those who help themselves!
make your garden wildlife friendly,supply food,water to drink and bathe somewhere safe to sit and (this is where the patience comes in)the birds will come follow some of the other tips to be found on this site and you may have to beat the wildlife off with a stick!!(not really of course)

[Imaginos]

Originally Posted by LonesomeTwin

Spurred on by Google, it turns out that this sighting was way, way out of its established area, and was probably well worth reporting. Without a photo, would I have been believed?

Years ago I saw my only Silver-spotted Skipper whilst filling my tyres at a service station on the M1, miles away from its known range, no photo/specimen, wasn't believed. The trouble is there are so many stringers out there that these restrictions are necessary, its galling when it happens to you though.

[nightshade]

What is a stringer?

[Imaginos]

Ooops, unguarded use of a twitcher term there. A stringer is someone who makes up sightings-stringing you along. Also to convince yourself that you've seen something that you probably haven't (e.g "I tried to string one of those herring gulls into a glaucous gull").
Not to be confused with a gripper-someone who has seen something interesting that nobody else found, hence "he gripped me off with a glaucous down the other end of the beach".

[nightshade]

Thanks, I think you should do us a dictionary please

[Kyani]

I've seen rarer animals, but I have to say the one sighting which means the most to me is one of a Fallow Deer stag.
I was quite young at the time and at my grandparents' house in Denham, when we spotted a humungous stag with a very impressive set of antlers stroll out of the woods and accross the grass island in front of the house. He was only about 20 feet away, and the window was huge, so we had a good view and he could see us, but wasn't bothered.
I'd only ever seen Muntjac Deer before, and he was so beautiful - unfortunately this was before I got to be obsessed with photographing everything!