The thieving magpie.....

I spent 18 years living in remote countryside and i really miss the birdlife now i live in Kings Cross.  Bingfield Park only has the dreary urban mix of magpies, pigeons and the odd crow.  This is mainly because the park trees only date from the 1970s and so don't have old rough bark to foster insects, which are vital for smaller birds nor do they have holes in which small birds nest.  Magpies, crows etc build their own big rickety nests, rather than find a hole and are quite happy living on garbage - i often see magpies fighting with squirrels over rubbish that spills out of the bins.  There is hope though, i did once see a Greater Spotted Woodpecker (to my astonishment) enthusiastically attacking a tree next to Rufford Street. 

So i bought some bird boxes and a bird feeder and put them up in the trees at the  West end of the Park.  The birds have studiously ignored the boxes, so i moved them higher up with help from birding neighbour Simon Lee.  One of the boxes mysteriously disappeared. Most recently i put up a squirrel resistant bird feeder for seed filled with blue tit mix.  And strangely this disappeared too.  So anyway i have put up a new one, this time padlocked onto the tree with a steel cable.  Let's see what happens.  If anyone sees magpies at work, perhaps wearing hoodies, let me know.......

UPDATE

A good first day for the feeder - a pair of blue tits, a male chaffinch and a male blackbird with loads of pigeons scurrying around like hoovers on the ground picking up spillage

Comments

[Sophie Talbot]

Good to hear that the range of birds you are getting is increasing. On the south side of Battlebridge Basin we have a very small patch of green that was planted from 1989 onwards. The mix of trees, shrubs and flowering plants each year seem to be a really good mix for the wild birds we are now getting - the ivy and other climbers are particularly good as many birds now nest there each year. Last year we had a pair of goldfinches and several mallard ducks visit us, in addition to the greenfinches, house sparrows, blue and great tits, blackbirds and robins we regularly have. We even get frogs here! Of course the trees (over 120) we raised funds for and got planted all over Kings Cross last year help too. The more wildlife friendly sites we can create, the more we will all benefit from our lovely visitors. All power to the greening of Kings Cross!!! Do you think a group of people interested in greening Kings Cross might be a useful thing for mutual support etc?