Our one-hour survey for the annual Big Garden Birdwatch run by the RSPB took place in our back garden, an ideal spot since it has no less than fourteen feeders permanently available and regularly refilled so it stood to yield a good count. We carried out the survey over lunch, usually a time when the feeders are busy. The weather started well, with grey skies and hardly a breath of wind but, as the hour progressed, the wind began to rise and the first rain of Storm Corrie started.
The way the survey works is that one reports the largest number of each species seen at any one time. Look carefully at this picture and you'll find no less than five blue tits, and this was the main feature of this year's survey - an overwhelming win for the blue tits, with a maximum of ten visible at one time. The trouble with a blizzard of blue tits is that they do rather intimidate some of the other birds, so we saw only two coal tits but know that there are good numbers of this species around.
The main, and very expected, finding of our little survey was the crash in the number of house sparrows: we saw only one at any time. I'm not sure what's going on with the sparrows but they tend now go around in packs so, usually, you'll either see none or half-a-dozen. This picture was taken some days ago.
Most of the other results were about right: great tits - 1, chaffinches - 5, dunnocks - 1, robins - 2, and blackbirds - 2. In all, for an hour's watching, this was a disappointing but very representative result.
Far too many birds are 'missing'. The greenfinches have disappeared again; we don't see any goldfinches; and more exotic species such as black caps and woodpeckers are absent.
So we're seeing some species, such as chaffinches, blue tits, robins, blackbirds and, perhaps, coal tits, doing quite well; we're seeing some, like the sparrows, struggling; and we're missing a number of species which used to be quite common. It'll be interesting to see the RSPB's report on the country as a whole.
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