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


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.

Well, even in 24 hours I was able to judge that a) the ex-hedge was
along the front of the garden - not a hard judgement - you told me! ;-)
b) that the lane was considerably quieter than suburban Leeds. c) there
was an awful lot of countryside around

Or did I get that wrong? ;-)

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.

Precisely - it puzzled me too. And I'm trying to explore why. You, I
think, put it down to the lack of utility of leylandii to wildlife, but
that is in contrast to my experience, which is that it's not brilliant,
but neither is it barren. So why do I get birds in leylandii when you
don't? My first thought is 'your hedge borders a road' ..... but it's an
incredibly quiet road - do you get many people walking past? (birds
don't worry much about cars) .... but again, maybe even a *quiet* road
is to be avoided in a rural area where there's lots of choice, whereas
my poor suburban birds have to take what they can get.

Sorry if I didn't fill in all the links in my thinking - I thought you'd
follow where I was coming from.


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.

I know. And that's puzzling, because I do get birds. And although it's
not a favourite tree, it is a favourite, in our garden, of the goldcrest
which isn't well catered for elsewhere in the garden.


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.

Do you get flocks of long tailed tits coming through? They like conifers
too, and also seem to like birch trees. I think they're my favourite
birds. You don't always see them immediately, but you hear them, and
that moment when you realise they're all around you is magical.

--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"