Garden Watch

I had time on Sunday to do my hour for the garden bird watch for the RSPB. It was not the greatest of days with the birds doing their usual disappearing trick. I ended up with just 7 species

2 Blue Tits

1 Robin

1 Wren

2 House Sparrows

1 Goldcrest

2 Great Tit

1 Blackbird

Now i've noticed whilst being off work and having the time to watch the garden a lot more there is no consistency to the birds visits. A couple of years back you could almost set your watch by the regularity of the majority of the birds being in the garden - early morning, lunchtime, late afternoon. These days the birds pop in and out all day long and certainly not in the numbers they used to. Of course there are moments when the Starling flock in in large numbers and the Goldfinch charm descend but for the most it's usually 2 or 3 birds of each species.

During the full day on Sunday we also had Goldfinch, Great Tits, Long Tailed Tit, Coal Tits, Starling, and Dunnock so there are certainly birds around, they just don't seem to work to the clock anymore!

After i'd finished my hour I was still watching out the window and saw a flock of birds land in a distant tree - Waxwings! They stayed in the tree a couple of minutes before flying right over the house - very nice tick! 

Here's one bird we don't get in the garden very often, two appeared in the garden last week but didn't hang around long.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch & Garden birds

This weekend saw the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, which was as frustrating as ever when finally getting my hour and the birds fail to show! It would have been better to make up my hour in 20 minutes stints over the whole weekend I think!

I ended up doing my hour on Sunday morning and these were the results submitted

Blackbird 2
Blue Tit 2
Robin 2
Great Tit 2
House Sparrow 1
Bullfinch 1

Despite these low results my garden has been flourishing bird wise in recent weeks in fact about half an hour after i'd done the Birdwatch, it was hit with 11 Long Tailed Tits and 2 Coal Tits. Typical.

The result i'm most pleased about is the Bullfinch, which showed up for the first time ever in my garden on Saturday with two others - 2f & 1m. They hung around on and off all day & I was hoping they'd still be here today, in the end only 1 of the females was but still, it was good of it to make an appearance during my hour.

I'm regularly getting the above birds along with Goldfinch, Collard Doves, Sparrowhawk, Magpies. I used to get Dunnocks and Woodpigeons but have seen neither in quite some time.

Here are a few photos taken this year, all through the window (which needs a good clean) and yes the feeder does have a bit of a lean thanks to a battering from next doors cat making a leap for some lunch (and luckily failing)!

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

I had time to squeeze in an hour of garden watching on Saturday just after lunch. My garden has been busy throughout the day over the past few weeks so I was hoping this would be as good a time as any as it was the only chance I would have!

It didn't go too badly - here is what I sent in to the RSPB

6 Blackbirds
2 Blue Tits
1 Chaffinch
1 Coal Tit
2 Dunnocks
7 Goldfinch
1 Great Tit
9 House Sparrows
2 Long Tailed Tits
1 Robin
4 Starlings

Of course as my hour was up the garden filled with Starlings, Blackbirds and Sparrows! It probably wasn't the best time but it was all I could do and I was quite pleased with what I saw, especially the Long Tailed Tits as they don't visit often.