Kitchen Garden Forum

Are you takng part in the Big Garden Birdwatch? Saturday or Sunday 27-28 January. How many birds does your garden attract?
Details on www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch
Hope you can spare an hour.

Alan

We do the Big Garden Birdwatch every year, and the number of different species of birds seen varies very little - always the tits(blue, great, long-tail and coal): the finches (chaffinch, greenfinch and sometimes goldfinch); robin, blackbird,wood pigeon, dunnock. Sometimes starlings, magpie, collared dove. We do have other visitors to the garden, but so far never during the Birdwatch hour, unfortunately, so I feel I would be "cheating" if I included them!
Regards, Lyn

I've done the birdwatch for the last couple of years - I've done it via the BBC. Is the BBC involved again this year?

Yes
see
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/nature/sites ... atch.shtml

Happy and successful watching

Alan

We'll be doing it as we do every year.

Yeah I'll be doing the bird watch. Had a bird table for about 6 months now-recently bought a bird feeder and some fat balls and peanuts. Sat at my window now but no interest so far-hopefully they'll get he message by the weekend!

Sometimes they turn up to be counted - other times they don't. Two years ago I saw about two birds in the hour. This year I am confidently expecting the usual variety including last year's hatches of about 100 sparrows and the recently arrived flock of starlings - the first we have seen here in seven years

Yesterday a pair of collared doves found their way into my garden! It was rather funny watching one trying to jump onto the bird table from the roof of the bird table-they looked like giants!
The good news is that they have returned today! Maybe a pair?

make that 4 collared doves!

We're in a rented house with a large garden backing onto open countryside so I was looking forward to recording all the varieties of birds I'd enjoyed seeing over the last few weeks. What did I spot in my hour? 2 pigeons, 2 magpies, a blackbird and a great tit. I saw more in my suburban modern house with a titchy garden last year!!!!!!!

I've noticed that birds seem to know when it's counting time and stay away. I did manage 65 starlings (we have never had any here until this year), but only by counting at a time I expect them flocking to feed in our field. Two blackbirds, a robin and a handful of sparrows (I've counted 50+ of them in recent weeks).

I suppose now the count is over they'll all be back

Alan

What's happened to the house sparrows? We had tree sparrows last summer obviously nesting locally, but no house sparrows and I see less and less of them. Also no starlings. Blue tits and great tits galore. Anyone know? Are we entering the realm of the silent dawn at last with pesticides etc diminishing their food supply or is it something else?

Catbud - I suspect the collared doves you saw were a pair -or two pairs as I believe I read somewhere that they mate for life. We've had the same pair coming for years. After nesting time we usually see a couple of babies but once mature the parents seem to drive them away as for the remainder of the year our two regulars appear every day. I don't know about yours but we find them very "twitchy" birds. They fly off from our bird table whenever they see any movement inside the house.

To all you folk who took part in the Great Bird Watch and didn't see many birds: did you choose your time carefully? Because birds usually have certain favourite times of the day to feed, one is first thing in the morning just after waking up and also just before going to roost in the late afternoon. That's when you will see the most activity. Around midday there is often a very quiet time (I suspect they are having a little siesta!) . We had lots of sightings including a flock of long-tailed tits, several goldfinches, bullfinches and a redwing. But then, although it's only a smallish garden, it overlooks a 2 acre village nature reserve in the Yorkshire Dales.