Big Garden Birdwatch

[wellinghall]

We've just taken part in the RSPB's "Big Garden Birdwatch". It's simple - you just watch your garden (or a park) for an hour, and record the maximum number of each species of bird that you see.

We had:
blue tit: 2 (including one inspecting our nest box)
great tit: 1
blackbird: 3
robin: 1
collared dove: 2
dunnock: 2
long tailed tit: 3
goldfinch: 1
chaffinch: 1
sparrow: 3
woodpigeon: 1
starling: 2
wren: 1
goldfinch: 1

More details of the birdwatch are on the RSPB's website, www.rspb.org.uk

Comments

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

malaheed saw 2 wood-pigeons, 1 robin, 1 blackbird which might have been in next door's garden. Suburban devastation. Usually we can see more that in just 10 minutes.

On the other hand I forgot to post a couple of weeks back when I muzzily stood up as the train pulled into Euston to see female commuters cringing and cowering because a small bird was zinging back and forth down the carriage. A few of us hung around and identified it as a terrified robin. Apparently it had been at the other end of the carriage since Bletchley. I proposed leaving the poor thing on the train till it got back out to Herts. rather than shooing it out into the bleak cityscape of the Marylebone Road.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The dunnocks were good spots.

Numbers in our garden are severely affected by the presence of six cats...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's true, actually. We don't feed the birds, because that's too much like providing a lure.

But the number of birds killed since we stopped putting out food is pretty low: on the whole what the cats kill is mice, voles and rabbits. The blackbirds do very well, for example.

[wryelle.livejournal.com]

Bah - we have no birds. None. Nada. I've never seen one. This is because we have a small enclosed back garden in an inner city terrace, with no trees and plentiful local cats.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

We saw the usual number of sparrows (11), dunnocks (2), a Great Tit or two (usually more), less Blue Tits (2) & Coal Tits (0) than usual, plus a Chaffinch, a Blackbird and 3 Green finches - normally we see more of all of them I suspect many may have been lured to other gardens by people putting more food out so as to do the Big Watch! And last week 2 Long-tailed Tits, but not this so we can't include them.

[romancinger.livejournal.com]

We have most of those (not necessarily all at the same time, I don't do the Big Watch) though not goldfinches. But if I had done the watch, there would have been bullfinches - up to 4 :)

And seagulls.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Ours would have been: magpie, magpie, ooh - two magpies, magpie...

Hazard of new estate with no mature trees.