Big Garden Birdwatch

Each year we take part in the RSPB's 'Big Garden Birdwatch', which took place this weekend. The rules are simple: spend an hour counting the birds which land in your garden, recording the largest number of each species visible at any one time. So we started with a pair of blue tits but by the end of the hour we had seen a, fairly expected, total of eight, all in the rowan tree and at the feeders at the one time. The number of coal tits has, very sadly, declined through the winter, so the two we saw were pretty representative, as was the single great tit.

We often see as many as five robins in the garden but today we only saw three, two of which, as usual, were having a fight. We also recorded two dunnocks.

Sparrows come and go in large chattering groups. The largest group today was six. By comparison, the finches are having a thin time so recording only one chaffinch and.... 

....one greenfinch was about right. Finally, two jackdaws appeared which again, is fairly representative, though I would prefer it if there were always zero.

So we thought we were doing pretty well until a blizzard of....

....long-tailed tits appeared, with as many as five of them crowding onto the sad remains of one of the fat balls and....

....almost as many feeding on this peanut feeder. This threw any sense of 'representation' out of the window: we've never seen long-tailed tits in the garden before and suspect that this merry little band have  heard that the Big Green Birdwatch is on and are putting in an appearance as many Golspie gardens as possible to mess up the local bird count.