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Yes this weekend we can help with citizen science, to check up on the health of our wildlife.
1) Spend one hour watching the birds in your patch, between 26th-28th January and record the birds that land.
2) Tell the RSPB what you saw (even if it's nothing at all).
Great fun for children too and its amazing what you see when you spend just one hour observing.
MrsF is thinking of doing it. We seem to be getting loads of Blue Tits, way more than usual - loads of feeders out, both front and back, and the wood pigeons like the stale bread left on the front lawn (as they have to pick up left overs that are split from the feeders too).
I was down South visiting my folks over Christmas and was sitting in my sisters kitchen (lives on outskiirts of Newbury) watching her bird feeder. While drinking a coffee we observed blue/great/cole/long-tailed tits and even a single marsh tit (which I have never seen before) also, nutchatch, spotted woodpecker and finally a Sparrow Hawk did a flypast the feeder!
All I get back home is the odd spadger and a few stuckies!
The more wild your garden is the better.
To attract birds the basics are: Small pond, tree of some sort and a slightly unkempt small area.
To go the whole hog: Hedges,big tree/s, veg/fruit plot, wild flower area, long grass area, old logs left to rot, bushes, planting insect native flowers, building a 'bug hotel', compost heap and a pond.
Leaving water around the garden in shallow dishes or a couple of bird baths will help.
Cats kept in early mornings and at night when possible.
Looking forward to it maybe if we are very lucky the great spotted woodpecker will put in appearance.
🙂
Sadly we don't get much wildlife, quite a lot of cats. Hoping this spring and summer the hound can stake claim to her territory and dissuade the felines from mooching through.
What's the view on good feeders for birds?
Feeders are good but keep them clean and clear up under them to avoid giant mice.
There's a good article on the BBC News website, linked to the Big Garden Bird Watch, discussing a ongoing decline in wild birds visiting gardens - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68099428
Did it this morning. We had fewer birds than last year overall, and no bullfinches which are normally a regular (down from 7 last year) or thrushes. But we gained 2 blackcaps and a long tailed tit which have both only started appearing this year. 26 birds total, which was also down on last year but not too bad for the middle of a city.
Is it bad that I saw that and thought “that’s me that is”
then thought “hang on are those swarovski binoculars?!”
I wandered across to have a chat to a birder who was standing in a car-park on the edge of the Loughor estuary last weekend, in a gale force wind and rain. He hadn't seen anything interesting, which was no surprise with the weather as it was. I'd wanted to check if he'd spotted the avocets or harriers which are lurking around that area.
Later, my wife told me to shut up when I started talking to her about the birder's Swarovski spotter scope... 😀
I never bother, the miserable little sods bugger off to their weekend estates in the country, leaving my feeders completely bereft of birdies. ☹️
I've just submitted my results. A good bird count but typically my favourite birds didn't turn up.
3 blackbirds, 3 blue tits, 6 chaffinch, 2 dunnock, 3 feral pigeons, 6 goldfinch, 3 greenfinch, 3 house sparrow,
6 long tail tit, 1 robin and 2 woodpigeon.
The black cap that's been visiting didn't show.
Feeders are good but keep them clean and clear up under them to avoid giant mice.
There's a crack team of woodpidgeons do that for me. The whole area is picked clean.
This year the suflower hearts are not in favour, though there's a lot of tits on my nuts and fat-balls feeders (ooer missus).