Birds in the garden and seen on my local daily walks

For the first time in many years starlings have begun visiting our garden. In fact a family of them have been coming in to the garden and their parents have been busily feeding them in and around the ground feeder.

The parent is the speckled bird with the metallic sheen, the male is often oilier than the female and has a bluish beak, whereas the femaile's beak is pin.The young one, below, is almost plain brown with a black beak.

Don't mistake the young starling (left) for a young blackbird. She is also brown but has a orange/brown beak (below.) rather than black and appears more speckled on the front.

This one that visits our garden regularly has a deformed leg, and has an odd posture. It is too tame for its own good, scarcely moving a I go out to to put out more bird food,  but she is managing to feed ok so far.

Another bird we only get occasionally in the garden is the Stock dove. A relative of the wood pigeon, feral pigeon and the collared dove but it is often overlooked .It lacks the white neck ring of the adult woodpigeon, has a dark eye and, unlike the woodpigeon, it is a protected bird.

The unmistakable call of the Mistle thrush, a harsh rattling noise, usually alerts you to the bird.

This one was squabbling with another bird when I walked along Scrapton Lane recently.

It is larger than the Song thrush and tends to prefer the open fields rather than edge of a garden.

In the winter, when the Mistletoe or the Yew tree has berries, one of its favourite foods, it will often defend this food source if other birds try and come in and start to feed. Watch out for it in the churchyard!