#CountryKids What do to with your prize coconut!

As I mentioned on Saturday my daughter won a coconut at the village Fayre. Now I hate coconut and my children weren't too keen on trying it so what to do? Well we have lots of birds coming into our garden so why not let them have it?

First of all we had a relative drill a hole to extract the "milk". Two brave adults (incuding me) had a sip *yuck* - most of liquid ended up poured down the drain! Then the coconut was put in a plastic bag and taken back to the workshop...

Quite some time later we were presented with a blue tit friendly feeder to hang under our bird table:

There were also plenty of chunks for my son to put on the table itself:

He is now keen to see if any birds actually come and eat it! Watch this space...

Feathery Friday

My window bird feeder is giving me an excuse to have another alliterative photo bonanza on a Friday! This week the birds have finally started using it but its been hard to photograph them. The instant I move close enough to zoom in they fly off... These were my first couple of attempts on iPhone and iPad:

Sparrow and Tit

Great Tit?

So today as I was preparing to tackle the washing up I cunningly took the proper camera into the kitchen. Whilst the sink slowly filled I lurked at the back of the kitchen with the zoom on! At first I just had a play:

Iris through the bird feeder

Then the birds appeared and I managed to get a few decent shots:

Checking out the menu options

Choice made

Ready for lift off

Missed that one!

Looking forward to seeing more though it will cost me a fortune in bird food!

Feed the birds

We have been keen to encourage birds into our garden for a while but yesterday's visit to Leighton Moss has boosted this even more. The bird table in our garden has been attracting blackbirds and starlings but we want to see more birds like the tits etc we saw feeding at the RSPB reserve:

We have previously put out fats and seeds as well as nuts to attract birds in and we have now added dried worms (yum!):

Funnily enough the worms had already vanished by the time I went back for another look! We have also but a window feeder on the kitchen window that will hopefully attract visitors:

So far today I have seen a blue tit popping into the garden and the starlings enjoying the fat. A heron also flew over the field behind to remind me of the one that we enjoyed watching yesterday:

What sort of birds do you see in your garden? We now just need to discourage the neighbourhood cats and put up the nesting box!

#CountryKids RSPB Leighton Moss

Today our family drop in group had a mini day out to the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss this is only 30 minutes south of us but we hadn't yet been there as a visit. It's pleasing to know its an affordable day out with adults £5 and children £1 (with 2 adults the children are free!).

We started by watching the birds at the plentiful feeders near the visitor centre. These were birds that between us we could easily recognise: sparrows, blue tits, great tits, pheasants, mallards, chaffinches, bullfinches, robin... There were also quite a few rats enjoying the leftovers!

Then we took a short walk to the first hide. It took the children a bit of getting used to being quiet but they were pretty good (not all other bird watchers appreciated hordes of kids around though!). It was fun for them to pop open the windows to look out and then try and spot birds. Another mum had brought a spy type listening device that was fabulous for picking up bird calls too:

After a while we had to move on as the children had had enough so we headed to the next hide which wasn't too far away. It was interesting walking through the reed beds and seeing things like the bearded tit reed wigwams:

The next hide opened onto a wider stretch of water and a helpful gentleman told us the names of some of the birds we were looking at including Shovelers and Gadwall ducks:

There were plenty of useful pictures and information boards in the hides to help you work out what it was you had seen:

After lunch the rest of the group went home in the minibus but we stayed on for another few hours which enabled us to see the rest of the nature reserve. It was worth walking a couple of miles on a round trip to see the other 2 hides. We also found that people were more laid back about 2 "well behaved" children than hordes of slightly noisy ones:

The path from one side of the moss to the other is hard standing and its a straight forward walk. Its only getting to the Lower Hide that took you onto narrower dirt tracks:

On the way we caught glimpses of the famous Marsh Harriers but nothing I could photograph! This last hide turned out to be the best of the bunch though as we saw species we hadn't seen before such as a Great Crested Grebe, Little Grebe as well as the Marsh Harrier plus a herd of red deer. The 3 gentleman in the hide were all very kind in letting the children look through telescopes and telling us where to look. They were of the mind that children had to learn somehow!

Our favourite bird at this hide was the heron who kept posing away and got in close enough for me to take far too many photographs before he flew away:

On our way back my son came running up to me saying he had seen an osprey. Having glimpsed one whilst driving to Whinlatter on Tuesday I was really keen to see one when I could take photographs. Of course birds don't appear to order and with my not super zoom it took a few practice shots to get a final cracker:

We were also lucky to hear the sound of the male bittern calling in the reeds. Such a wonderful place we will have to go back and see what little ones we can spot after all the flirting we saw going on today!