On 28/10/04 20:10, in article , "Kay"
wrote:

In article , Sacha
writes
On 28/10/04 12:10, in article , "Kay"
wrote:

But that hedge was along the road, wasn't it? In a rural area where
there were plenty of quieter alternatives

But the road wasn't a busy one - more of a lane - in the house you visited.
I once timed the traffic out of 'rush hour' and two cars went past in ten
minutes! It's hardly a busy highway.

I was thinking people rather than cars, and although it isn't busy
compared with where I am, in a rural area like that there are a lot more
trees and birds can be more fussy.

Kay, I'm not sure why but you seem to be stretching this to some rather
obscure limits. You were at my house for about 24 hours but seem to feel
able to make a judgment about the area and conditions. You're thinking
'people'? 'People' what? Are you now saying that people walking past,
people on horseback, people walking dogs are going to frighten the local
bird population out of the trees? I repeat that birds were to be found in
neighbours' trees and in my other trees but not in the leylandii hedge. It
was something I particularly remarked because it puzzled me.

I have no idea why but can only say
that my experience of leylandii was not that it was popular with birds. I
am puzzled by this, I admit, because it's so dense that you'd think it would
be a sort of avian high-rise. Our mixed holly/yew hedge outside the tea
room is alive with sparrows

I think the appeal of leylandii is probably a narrow one. Certainly I
don't see our sparrows in it - the seem to prefer something a bit more
open, like rose, elderberry, birch.

The point is that I saw NO birds nesting or even perching for long, in the
thick leylandii hedge that I had in that particular house - a hedge you
never saw, BTW - nor in the smaller hedge I had in a previous house.

and has people constantly walking up and down
the path beside it, so I'd query that traffic, whether human or motorised,
has much effect on birds that have become accustomed to it.

I think you're right there - our nyjer seed feeder is hanging in the
archway over our front gate, and it's only when people go right past it
(rather than cross the road a few feet away) that the goldfinches fly
off.

The Leylandii hedge next door is at least a perching post for quite a
number of birds, and the goldcrests nest in it.

Perching occasionally, yes but nesting, no. I don't think we have
goldcrests around here, or not that I've seen. What sort of habitat and
food do they prefer?

Conifers as habitat. I think they're insect feeders. They're in fact
quite common, but very hard indeed to spot as they're so tiny and spend
so much of they're time grubbing around in foliage. I've seen them in
the leylandii and found nests, then apart from that I've spotted them
grubbing around rather like wrens do (and their common name is 'golden
crested wren') - almost always from very close up, either in the ivy
outside the kitchen window or the euphorbia outside my study window.

Well, we have ivy and euphorbia and lots of wrens, so I'll keep my eyes
open. We have more than a few conifers in this area but I haven't seen these
little birds.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)