
I often have neighbours popping into Cosy Cottage Garden Cafe. It is a self-service restaurant where customers can just help themselves to the regularly replenished supplies.
Fat balls are supplied, a delicacy favoured by the tits. The long-tailed tits come as a large close-knit family, the blue tits and great tits venture in by themselves or in pairs.

Robin is a regular, a nosy fellow, he likes to keep an eye on any gardening being done. Unfortunately, he is a jealous loner too, and doesn’t like to see others in his café.
There’s plenty of room for you all, I say, keeping the peace as cafe proprietor.
But he ignores me and shouts abuse at a larger blue tit.
Luckily, when the argumentative Robin flies on to another cafe, my customers come back. But despite his bad behaviour to other clients, he is a favourite regular and is always welcome here.

Blackbird prefers the ground seating to upstairs. As well as scatterings from the bird table, he may be lucky enough to catch a juicy worm for dessert. He too comes by himself, but is happy enough to share the edibles with the other birds.
Pigeon too, is a regular customer, sometimes he brings his mate and they munch on tasty leftovers, dropped by messy eaters from above.
Fat balls aren’t the only item on offer. There are coconut feeders and an array of healthier seed is also available, although the fat balls are the most popular. A drinking area with water is also set aside for my clients.
As well as regulars, there are the more flamboyant visitors. A bullfinch and his mate have hovered in the nearby trees, a nuthatch paid a visit on a couple of occasions, sampling the goods, and a Jay has also been a colourful client, staying a short while. Sparrows, starlings, a coal tit and a shy little dunnock, who prefers not to be noticed, have all sampled the delights of Cosy Cottage café.
It is a pleasure to serve such a diversity of characters. Do you have a ‘cafe’ in your garden?

- Facts of the Day
1. The tail of the long-tailed tit is more than half the bird’s total length.
2. The great tit is the largest member of the tit family in Britain. More than 50 distinct calls and songs have been identified.
3. Coal tits are the smallest tit in Britain. Its favourite habitat is coniferous woodland.
- Information from Reader’s Digest The
- Best of Wild Britain.
Oh that bullfinch is gorgeous!
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They are very beautiful birds. Very vivid red colour. 🙂
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Must be lots of singing. Perhaps you can organize an orchestra.
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I could be the conductor! 🙂 I have a couple of bird song cds which I keep meaning to listen to and learn from. At the moment, I couldn’t tell one bird’s song from another, it would be nice to learn.
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I do enjoy the customers at my cafe as well. However I do run off the Starlings when multiple show at one as they scare off the others. I have two different varieties of woodpeckers with their red so bright against the snow.
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How lovely to have woodpeckers come to visit. I have only seen a woodpecker once and that was quite far away so couldn’t make out the colours clearly. Yes, the starlings can be rather over-enthusiastic! They always seem to come in large groups when I see them, quite intimidating for other birds.
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I love how you did this post Clare … it was very cute and the birds are so pretty. I had bird feeders and birdbaths for years – I loved catering to the birds, then a new neighbor moved behind and had a pit bull terrier and it was left outside 24/7/365. The neighbor fed the dog table scraps … soon my neighbor and I got rats and we had to stop feeding and watering the birds … it broke my heart, but we had to get a pest service in to bait and I didn’t want the birds getting hold of any poison, and they said bird seed would attract rats and the water in the birdbath would be used by rats … this is because the rat poison dried their insides and made them thirsty. I upset me greatly as I loved watching the birds come to drink, bathe and eat in the yard.
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I had a rat some years ago but changed my wooden feeder to a steel one with a slippery pole so rats couldn’t climb it. I didn’t have seed either for a long while, just fat balls and coconut feeders but decided to try the seed again. I think my pigeon visitor eats up all the seed droppings in the garden. But then in the chicken garden (at the side of the house), my dad spotted a rat. So we had to close off any holes we found, not scatter any corn or grain but keep it in the one place. Dad bought a live trap for transporting the rat elsewhere but fortunately it seems to have gone. Rats in my garden are a fear of mine as my chickens will get the blame for attracting them so I always have to keep an eye on things.
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Yes, you have to watch all the time. When we have fresh snow I go out in the backyard and check for rat tracks/tail “tunnels” … I would get upset when I had the rat tracks at the side of the house, because they like to walk close to the house or the fenceline. We haven’t had that much snow lately – when we have it, it is either a whopper snowstorm or comes in the form of a wintry mix. But the last snow I went out back and saw rabbit tracks all over the yard and some droppings – I have spotted Coopers Hawks in the neighborhood and I am sure they are using my yard as a safe haven as I have bushes and most of the neighbors don’t have anything on the perimeter … that’s okay, I’d rather the rabbits don’t get nabbed by the hawks. And, I hope I never see that happen either.
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So cute 💕
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They are lovely neighbours to have. 🙂
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Congratulations, your blog has been included in INTERESTING BLOGS in FRIDAY FOSSICKING at
https://thatmomentintime-crissouli.blogspot.com/2019/02/friday-fossicking-15th-feb-2019.html
Thank you, Chris.
As a fellow bird feeder, how could I resist this? Lovely to see different birds to those who visit us…
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Thank you Chris. Glad you enjoyed it. 🙂
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Some absolutely cracking shots there Clare – l heard last night just as dusk was moving on the day the Blackbird singing his delightful song, our male is such a character and is the right mimic and so musical. We also have a pesky blighter of a green headed woodpecker that loves nothing more than creeping up the palms in the garden. Strangely enough l have two male robins constantly popping into visit, l am unsure if they are father and son or something of that kin, but they are very sporting of each other. We have the beautiful yellow hammers, sparrows, the maggies and pigeons all visit daily to plunder the seed and take and enjoy their morning dip in the bath.
They are absolutely the ideal companions for gardens – love to see them.
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You sound like you have great feathered neighbours too! You’re definitely lucky to get yellow hammers and woodpeckers in your garden, that’s terrific. 🙂
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The birds in this garden are brilliant, we also have an occasional badger and the fox. The latter is a frequent visitor, the badger once every three weeks or so.
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I’m quite envious now! Although it’s probably just as well I don’t get visits from badgers or foxes as I have hens but if I didn’t, they would be wonderful visitors. Your garden does sound fantastic. 🙂
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We are lucky, as we have a full range of visitors, but no hedgehogs. It’s strange in our street which is a hill, we are at the top. we are surrounded by countryside and small copse woods. But on my side of the street we don’t get hedgehogs, on the other side they get hedgehogs?? More bizarre, is that on this side of the road we suffer terribly with snails and yet the other side of the road only gets slugs???
Can anyone answer that mystery?
With the presence of slugs on the other side of the road, it does make sense why they have hedgehogs though lol! But we have more thrush here, and what do thrush love cracking open??
Snails!!
Now that’s spooky!
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Weird how one side attracts snails and the other slugs – and that the hedgehogs and thrushes know which side is best for them! By the way I’ve nominated you for The Versatile Blogger Award. 🙂 https://cosycottageandthequestforthegoodlife.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/versatile-blogger-award/
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It is indeed. I know this as l used to do gardening for neighbours around here, mostly elderly and so as you do you get talking and you discover the strangest of things!
Thank you Clare, l shall try and attend to that this week 🙂
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Reblogged this on A Guy Called Bloke and K9 Doodlepip! and commented:
If you like your birds and are not adverse tits or red breats – read on … what? NO! Silly – you know birds of a feather!
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Thanks for the reblog Rory! 🙂
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Absolute pleasure Clare 🙂
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I miss seeing the bullfinches and goldfinches that visit my childhood home. I’ve only seen one of each in five years of living in my house. We get loads of black redstarts, which are lovely, and a very sweet tree creeper and nuthatch.
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I’ve only seen a bullfinch a few times, Simon sees a lot of goldfinches at his garden in Lincolnshire but none ever come to my garden. It would be lovely to have them visit. You are lucky to see black redstarts and the tree creeper. I’ve never seen either of those. I was delighted to see the nuthatch, a one-off visit though I think.
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He is lovely, but he keeps pecking at the wooden beams on our overhanging roof, which is rather frustrating!
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I’ve only seen a bullfinch a few times, Simon sees a lot of goldfinches at his garden in Lincolnshire but none ever come to my garden. It would be lovely to have them visit. You are lucky to see black redstarts and the tree creeper. I’ve never seen either of those. I was delighted to see the nuthatch, a one-off visit though, I think.
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This is a brilliant one. I used my garden too to teach my kids some lessons .. read it here https://sunniesmybunnies.wordpress.com/2017/09/09/garden/
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