New Garden Visitor Today

[choux]

Magnificent peach colour too :)

http://www.arkive.org/lesser-kestrel/falco-naumanni/

[Tilly2]

We have a greater Spotted woodpecker as a regular. It's really vicious to the other birds. Peck off!

[frugalfred]

Prudie, neither have I. Normally they arrive and strip the berries from my Ilex castaneifolium (Chesnut-leaved Holly), but this year, as of now, the berries are still on the tree!

[Tilly2]

Thanks for the link, fred.

[paddywak]

The other morning I saw my first wagtail in ages strutting across the pavement near the paper shop.The bird I really miss though,you seldom saw it,is the cuckoo.When I was a kid you seemed to hear them all over the place and you knew summer was here,now you're lucky you hear one at all.

[Captain2]

Oh forgot to say, we had a fly pass the other day of six jays in formation with all their colours to the fore. That was beautiful.

[Prudie]

I wonder if they knew it wasn't going to be cold enough fred!

[jomifl]

Mrs. collar dove has aquired a new mate, her fourth in just over a year. She introduced him to our kitchen yesterday, I hope she gets a chick to fledging this year, her life is becoming a tragedy having lost 2 chicks as well as the 3 mates.

[kawakiri]

Best spot I ever had in my garden were a pair of Goldcrests.

[Tilly2]

We live by a river and the Reed Buntings are frequent visitors. They are lovely. I have never seen a Goldcrest.

[nungate]

I have never seen one of those kestrels, fabulous. Thanks for the info about the greenfinches have hardly seen any this year. We often have sparrow hawks around the garden, and have seen the "other" kestrels from time to time. Before we moved to this house there were lots of bullfinches around the garden at this time of year (or earlier) they used to peck at the buds on the cherry plum trees at the bottom of the garden, I have seen a few since we moved here but it's mostly goldfinches they arrive by the dozen in our garden

[kawakiri]

This was a few years ago, snow on the ground. I noticed something darting around in a Berberis. I thought it was a wren at first but then noticed the distinctive crest and saw there were two. Unfortunately this was the only time they visited.

[carrust]

I've just checked on birdguides, the last lesser kestrel seen in the UK was in 2013!

[choux]

carrust - your point is?

We had a very good sighting of this bird and checked both on line and in 3 bird books. I am happy that it was identified correctly. Happy twitching :)

[carrust]

http://www.birdguides.com/species/species.asp?sp=032024
I think if you'd had a LK in your area you'd be crawling with twitchers.