On holiday this week and spending more time in the garden. I'm not a big bird watcher, but my wife spends a lot of time looking at the birds in the garden.

We were sitting on the patio watching the birds feeding, we have a fair few different ones already and we haven't even had the first frost yet:

• House sparrows - over a dozen of them
• Field sparrows
• Dunnock (hedge sparrow)
• Brambling
• Blue tits - 3 or 4
• Great tits - 2
• Jay - 2
• Blackbirds - a pair (male and female)
• Woodpecker
• Pigeons - 3 or 4
• Robin
• Swallows
• Green finch
• Sparrowhawk
• Nightingale
• Redtail

And that is just the ones in the garden. On the fields out the back and on the river there are the usual ducks and geese, but also peewits, kingfisher, herons and storks. At night, we can hear a tawny owl out the back, but I've never seen it. We also get a lot of bats down on the river.

When winter sets in, we will probably see a whole bunch more tuning up - hawfinch, goldfinch, serin, yellowhammer, skylark, starling, wren, garden warbler.

So, are any of you bird watchers, casual or professional? What sort of birds turn up in your garden and surrounding area?

I've been able to spot robins in our back garden but beyond that I'm stumped. I reckon I could differentiate between say a sparrow and a seagull but that'd be my limit.

Snigger, I'll get me coat.

Otherwise, I can tell the difference between some species but I'm rubbish in comparison to my parents.
Alas, my garden seems to be the confluence of several cats ranges so I don't seem to get very many birds in the garden

I learnt a lot about birds as a kid, but forgot most of it. I could distinguish the most common birds, but not much more.

My wife loves to sit there and has a bunch of reference books sitting on the window sill. I've now learnt them all by their German names, although I could probably easily translate about 2/3 of the list I posted, some I had to look up, like Dunnock, Brambling and Yellowhammer.

My wife sniggered, when I translated Blaumeise and Kohlmeise (blue tit and great tit)! I then tried to explain Booby to her! Turns out the German name is Tölpel, which is also slang for clumsy.