Ruud Kleinpaste: Birds in the garden

Birds in your garden. It’s breeding time! And although you may not realise it, there are likely some species making nests and breeding in dense bushes in your garden.  First the story of James Russell: he’s the scientists that works of predator control and subsequent translocations of birds to pest-free islands and restored native bush. During lockdown he decided to do some bird banding in his garden. He was keen to catch his resident fantail that would visit every late afternoon, and he did! Every late-afternoon he caught another fantail – until he realised there were 36 “resident fantails” I in his garden. Moral of story: There are far more birds in your patch than you realise! Bird-banding often reveals a lot about bird populations.  I have noticed, so far: 2 blackbird nests, 1 song thrush, 2 dunnocks (hedge sparrows), at least 1 gold finches, a green finch and a few chaffinches in the dense macrocarpa hedge. I also suspect a sneaky bellbird, and am hoping that the Californian quail like my dense wind-break at the bottom of the section.  Code of Conduct around nests: 
If you do stumble across a nest in some shrubbery, while pruning, for instance, have a quick look to see if there are any eggs or young birds in it. If so, back out and conceal the nest as much as possible. Put branches back in their position asap; that gives them privacy from prey-ing eyes of predators. Most bird species can cope with a bit of disturbance – depends on how far in the brood-cycle they are. Usually when they have young in the nest, parents will keep on feeding them. Eggs are a “rather new” investment for the parent birds and they may sometimes pull the plug on that nest.  Blackbirds and thrushes are often quite touchy: I noticed that as soon as the nest has been “discovered” and their privacy is breached, the young will fledge far too early and before they can actually fly away from cats and dogs!  
This puts them in a much more vulnerable situation.During the breeding season, the young birds sometimes do silly things, like fly clumsily into your windows. If you find those top-gun fails sitting on the ground like a stunned mullet, carefully pick them up and put them in a dark card-board box for an hour or so. Out of the light and no interaction. No feeding, watering or handling. Keep them quiet for a while and you’ll be surprised how they recover from such a knock!  If your patient is a rare/endangered bird, please contact a local vet and organise some professional hospital care. LISTEN TO AUDIO ABOVE    

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