Where have all the blackbirds gone?

[stewamax]

Until three weeks or so ago, our garden was serenaded from lunchtime to dusk by numerous and delightfully melodious blackbirds.
Now all we get are the ruddy pigeons: di dah dah di di!

[kiloran]

Funny you should say that, we had a blackbird warbling its heart out from the top of trees, all day, every day for a few months. But over the past week or so, it's gone.

--kiloran

[Dod101]

By now most birds have more or less stopped singing. In May I had a couple of song thrushes which sang from 6.30 pm until almost past dusk and they were so noisy that if I wanted to watch TV I had to keep the windows closed. But they stopped very suddenly a day or two into June.

Part of nature's cycle I am afraid.

Dod

[stewamax]

Part of nature's cycle I am afraid.

I wish the pigeons would learn to ride...

[supremetwo]

Until three weeks or so ago, our garden was serenaded from lunchtime to dusk by numerous and delightfully melodious blackbirds.
Now all we get are the ruddy pigeons: di dah dah di di!

They have possibly started another brood - 3-4 times per year.

[Mike4]

Until three weeks or so ago, our garden was serenaded from lunchtime to dusk by numerous and delightfully melodious blackbirds.
Now all we get are the ruddy pigeons: di dah dah di di!

They have possibly started another brood - 3-4 times per year.

My house seems to have about a dozen wood pigeons constantly messing about on the roof and in the trees in the garden. I've been wondering why they seem so attracted to my house in particular but tonight I walked 1/2 a mile down to the boat and sat outside reading my new wild flower book, and there are just as many wood pigeons down here.

It seems a bumper year for them. Never seen so many everywhere.

[tjh290633]

Could be that they are moulting and hide away, although our local ones are about.

TJH

[Gengulphus]

Some of the blackbirds have been in my garden, hopping around in and near the rather too prevalent :-( undergrowth looking for (and finding) food. Mainly young ones from their appearance, and some remarkably unworried by coming pretty close to me (within about a foot of my feet on a few occasions when I was standing or sitting still). I rather fear that those ones are not long for this world, and indeed may already have departed it, since I regularly see neighbourhood cats wandering through...

Gengulphus

[sg31]

I've noticed the blackbirds disappear from our garden for a few weeks several times each year. It happens all year round but I've not yet picked up a pattern to it.

Our garden is rural and normally I can see 10 or so blackbirds on it, not at all times of day but regularly. That's what makes the absence so notable. I have thought that maybe the are drawn away by an abundant food source elsewhere but I can't see there being anything that would draw all of them for such long periods.

It is interesting.

[Nimrod103]

I remember reading an article somewhere about how Blackbirds were very mobile, moving quite long distances to set up new territories, So maybe many of the adults have moved on.

I find it is about this time of year that young blackbirds find their way into my fruit cage, which, try as I might, I cannot make entirely bird proof. The young blackbirds seem to be attracted by all the red fruit ripening - much more so than adults. They always find their way out, I have never had to catch any of them to release them, but they seem to be drawn like moths to a flame.