Big Garden Bird Flop

I like to take part in the RSPB's bird surveys even though I have some reservations about the society. The Big Garden Birdwatch, carried out over this weekend, produces data which gives a snapshot of the state of Britain's garden birds, done in such a way that the many people who take part obtain both some satisfaction and a sense of achievement at having done something which might help to save some of our best-known birds.

I intended to do the survey - which simply consists of watching the birds in the garden for an hour, and counting up the largest number of each species seen at any one time - yesterday but ended up leaving it to today - and running into all sorts of problems as we have winds of 20mph gusting to over 40, conditions which the small birds do not enjoy. As a result, my count - 3 blue tits, 1 coal tit, 5 house sparrows, 1 dunnock, 1 robin, 4 chaffinches and 3 greenfinches - was totally under-representative of what is normal in in our garden.

At one point the greenfinches, a bird of which, recently, we've seen few, were well in the lead, and the house sparrows only caught up at the last minute. To have seen only one robin, very briefly, is also misleading: normally there are at least two in the garden, usually arguing, and we think we have at least four visiting us. Some birds common in our garden didn't appear at all: the blackbirds seem to have gone to bed for the day, 

We usually have a constant flow of coal tits onto the feeders but throughout the hour I only saw one, fairly briefly, and it was sheltering in the lee of a tree trunk even though I had just recharged the special small-tit sunflower seed dispenser in readiness for the count. As for only seeing three blue tits.... we often have that many hanging off one peanut feeder.

The chaffinches, at four, were over-represented relative to the others, though this was a bit of a miracle as this male spent much of his time chasing all the other chaffinches away.

Never mind. I've done my bit for citizen science. Now, please would this wretched wind die down and give us some peace.