Big Garden Birdwatch 2015
This year our chosen hour was between twelve and one, not usually the gardens busiest time but with bad weather approaching we wanted to get our count in as early as possible (and before anyway says anything twelve is early for a Sunday!). Initially things were disappointingly quiet with the recent substantial flocks of Chaffinches and House Sparrows much reduced or in the case of the latter absent entirely. Instead we had to rely on our regulars, the Blue Tits, Great Tits, Dunnocks, Robin and Blackbird. As the hour ticked by however numbers began to steadily increase until with just ten minutes to go we were almost back up to full strength. Even the recently elusive Coal Tit had popped in for a couple of Sunflower seeds before hiding itself away back in the hedge. What we really had our fingers crossed for though were the Long-tailed Tits, a flock of which are now pretty regular visitors here but only for very brief spells. You can imagine our excitement therefore when all eight of them arrived with barely a couple of minutes to go, a rush of action to bring our watch to an end.
Jackdaw (2) Blackbird (1) Robin (1) Chaffinch (7) Blue Tit (5) |
House Sparrow (8) Great Tit (2) Coal Tit (1) Long-tailed Tit (8) Dunnock (2) |
With those results submitted I wanted to test out a theory. I've long suspected that the hour before dusk is far busier in the garden than at any other time so from three until four we repeated the count. For the first half hour activity around the feeders was absolutely frenetic despite bird numbers being relatively similar to earlier in the day. There was a constant movement between our property and each neighbour which made counting far more difficult though as time progressed a steady increase in both Chaffinches and House Sparrows was observed. I'm particularly pleased at this as each used to be a mainstay here but seem to have decreased in number over the last couple of years. Now that they're back let's hope it's for good and I shall be putting up a few new nest boxes at the weekend to try and encourage breeding this spring.
Pied Wagtail (1) Robin (1) House Sparrow (12) Chaffinch (11) |
Dunnock (2) Great Tit (2) Blue Tit (5) Blackbird (1) |
As you can see from the numbers above we finished a couple of birds down on the earlier count due to a complete no show from the Long-tailed Tits but did pick up a very confiding male Pied Wagtail. Though not conclusive I think my theory holds water and at the very least it was a thoroughly enjoyable way to while away a couple of hours.
2 comments:
Please note that comments will not appear immediately as after a surprising amount of spam I have had to enable moderation.