Suburban Birdwatching with the RSPB’s #BigGardenBirdwatch

This morning I was super excited as today was the planned  day of our Big Garden Birdwatch, I rose before dawn hoping to catch the morning chorus. I did and the sound was glorious. I was eager to get started but then realised that a little sun and warmth would bring more birds to the feeders. Although this didn’t stop me and my brother chillin’ out on our sofa hammock, chatting about what we might see and experiencing the gradual loss of feeling in our fingers!

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As the morning sun dappled the grass, we set our clock, dispersed to our lookout points note pads at the ready. There were birds everywhere and it was hard to keep track, but we had huge diversity. Our top spot was two Goldcrests (Regulus regulus) swiftly snatching a mealworm from the coconut shell before diving into the undergrowth. Fantastic! Another highlight was spotting four individual Robins, squabbling for territory. Our pair have settled firmly in our garden though, so I don’t suppose they’ll budge without a war! We had all our usual visitors plus a few extra! Here’s our full list for Saturday 28th January, in a sunny suburban garden for one hour between 10-11am:

Blue Tit – 4 Great Tit – 2 Coal Tit – 2 Greenfinch – 2 Chaffinch – 6 House Sparrow – 4 Blackbird – 2 Dunnock – 2 Robin – 4 Wren – 1 Goldcrest – 2 Magpie – 1 for sorrow (oops) Rook – 1 Jackdaw – 1 Pied Wagtail – 2 Starling – 1 Collared Dove – 1 (sadly our other one has gone awol!) Rock Dove – 1 Woodpigeon – 1 and in the last ten seconds a lovely Song Thrush. 20 species and a total of 41 birds. I was completely chuffed with that. I didn’t get photographs of all our recorded birds – here’s a few

It’s very funny though, as our Birdwatch came to an end the garden filled with House Sparrows and Starlings, so next year, I’m starting at 11am – you never know, I could get a Sparrowhawk. We’ve a couple of incidents recently in our garden; scattered feathers, a dart of wings and an hour of eeriness in the garden was the only evidence.

There’s still the rest of today,

tomorrow and Monday to get involved. I really recommend you do it; it’s fantastic fun, it gets kids involved with observing nature and the survey really helps ornithologists work out trends and record numbers. You can even give yourself the well deserved title off Citizen Scientist if you do. I’m off now to enter our findings onto the RSPB website. I also look forward to comparing my results with lots of others who have been recording too.

Thanks for reading

Dara

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3 Responses

      1. I was surprised, but not in a good way. I’m used to robins, blue tits, great tits, long/tailed tits, blackbirds, crows, sparrows, starlings, collared doves (I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything).

        During the hour, all I saw were two Wood pigeons! Very shortly afterwards sparrows, robins and collared doves came along and later in the day the usual crowd were all present.

        Very disappointed all-in-all.

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