Eco Friendly House And Garden

They are well known for their tireless work to help wetland birds - but there’s plenty more!

The RSPB Wildlife Charity based in the UK are here to protect more than just waders - they cover all sorts of wings, legs and trunks!

No, not elephants: trees, plants and whole habitats!  Saving 1 species of bird is virtually meaningless; as the birds need a place to live and feed too - so just focusing on 1 thing was never going to be a successful plan!  So they have expanded their range and set more targets for themselves.

So what are the 5 main aims of the RSPB today - other than just keeping british bird populations healthy - and how can you help then to increase their efforts!

1) Safeguarding The Sea!
We know that they are already working to protect, clean and manage inland waterways and estuarine environments - I mean, we have all been to one of their reserves - but what about the huge expanse of water along the coast and out to sea!

With the recent implementation of the Marine Act in England and Wales, they are working hard to give this environment the best protection they can as over 50% of the UK’s birds and wildlife rely on the sea for food and breeding.

However, the Act doesn’t extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland - so you could be working with them to protect these areas too.

2) Avoiding Extinctions:
By knowing which species are where in the UK, the RSPB can tell when they are in trouble and need a helping hand.  Sometimes this is just through careful monitoring, but more commonly it means taking drastic and emergency action.

Whether it’s the captive breeding of individuals, the re-introduction of others or the working in secret locations to protect small populations, they make sure that the few remaining birds have got the best chance possible to breed and rear healthy offspring.

And it’s not just in the UK that they are trying to save species, for example they have reduced the accidental deaths of 18 species of albatross by a whopping 85%.  Longline fishing around the Antarctic was killing 1000’s of these birds every year - and they hope to extend this success around the worlds other oceans.

3) Inspiring Indonesia!
Working overseas again, the RSPB is saving precious rainforest in Sumatra - aimed at the bird life but now protecting mammals, insects and amphibians too.

Providing and protecting a tropical habitat that is home to rare tigers, sun bear, monkeys and all sorts of colourful birds and other wildlife is their top priority in this region - and they hope to protect more land here and across the globe.

4) Coping With Climate Change:
They actively lobby the government on all issues they feel relevant to preventing any more climate changing activities like opening further coal-powered power stations and encouraging sustainable energy production, such as wind farms.

They arranged a hugely successful march through London last year - called The Wave - and are now asking the public to sign their ‘Letter to the Future’ so that a million voices can all tell the Government what we think our country should be doing for the Planet.

5) Countryside Fun!
What is the point in saving these habitats if nobody is going to use them?  So the RSPB work hard to make the countryside accessible for all by improving and expanding their reserves and other protected areas.

By encouraging schools and adults alike to respect and explore the Great Outdoors, they are helping to make sure that there are people in the UK today who will take care of our countryside in the future!

You can help by becoming a member for as little as £3 a month (less than the entry fee to 1 of their paying reserves) or a family from just £50 for the whole year!

Or you can offer to volunteer at a reserve near you and make a physical difference to the UK countryside and the wild places around you.

During the bright sunny weather - there are butterflies everywhere!

But what are they all called, and why does it matter?  Well, it matters because butterflies are very specific feeders and so can tell us what the health of certain plants is like - and therefore which habitats are disappearing and which ones a expanding.  And this information is vital to biodiversity and conservation.

So - how many butterflies can you identify?  Which plants have you introduced or encouraged in your garden to attract butterflies?

Well, now is your chance to learn a few more and actually use this new information to help a national survey tell us about our changing environments.

The Survey:
The Butterfly Conservation Trust and Marks & Spencer have got together to organise a very simple sample survey of your local butterflies.

Basically, all they want you to do is tally up all the butterfly species you see in your garden or on a walk in just 15 minutes.

No need to learn a billion species or any rare butterflies - just the common and most widespread species in the UK.

They have even produced a fantastic, clear and comprehensive visual identification guide to around 15 butterflies - showing both upper and lower wing patterns.  They couldn’t have made it any easier!

So could you spare a few minutes now looking through the species guide and then 15 minutes at the end of July to tally them up?  A pair of binoculars wouldn’t be a bad idea either!

Why Butterflies?
Well, butterflies are very obvious in the environment.  They don’t try to hide - infact they brandish their wings to the sun; they come out during the brightest, clearest days and they are usually brightly coloured too - with some quite striking patterns.

Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

This means that it would be a lot easier that trying to spot night-flying moths or small mammals etc!

As mentioned before, they only feed on certain plants and only lay their eggs on certain other plants, so you can be very sure that where there are White Admirals there will be Honeysuckle and where there are Silver-Washed Fritillary there will be Dog Violet.

Therefore if there certain plant species dying off or becoming more abundant due to land-use changes or differing weather patterns - the butterflies will have to change their local habitat to make sure they and their young can feed.

And this is where the survey can tell the specialist and awful lot!  The information for just our garden might not really tell us anything - but add that up between all the survey results and the picture will become much clearer.

So the more people who can spare 15 minutes of their time - the more definitive the results will be, and the more action can be taken to make sure we don’t lose butterflies from our gardens - and don’t lose entire habitats because we didn’t care to look!

So, go get your suncream and a pen!

Can working in your local bakers be just as eco friendly as saving whales in the Pacific?

Yes, of course it can!  Just because you aren’t out there on the front line fighting deforestation and humanitarian crimes - doesn’t mean you aren’t making the best choices for your environment.

Don’t get ‘ethical’ issues confused with ‘environmental’ issues - the latter being active for the planet - and the people and communities benefiting from the ethical side of things.

How Can You Help?
Well, working closer to home is an easy one for starters.  Why travel miles to work if you can get a job within walking distance of your front door.  I mean, there will be people driving past you as they work in the offices or stores near your home, and you spend the day working close to their home!

It’s not always working for an eco friendly business that makes your individual job more eco friendly either.  I mean travelling 20 or more miles a day in your car to get to an eco friendly workplace by no means compares to someone who walks 5 minutes to work in a local bakers - even if the baker doesn’t use the most eco friendly equipment! Over a year the difference is more obvious.

And if you are eco minded - then you could help to implement changes to your workplace to make them more eco-friendly in themselves.  I mean if you could work locally to promote eco friendly practices in a locally run family business in your own community - what could be more eco friendly!

Look At Yourself Now:
Even if you aren’t planning on changing jobs - there are plenty of things you could look at in your current role and help to change.  And with the shortage of truly ‘green’ jobs about - you are probably better to become a mini activist in your current role!

However, it’s not all the same green!  Just because the charity you work for helps wildlife conservation - it doesn’t mean that everything else is a given.  For example, if you are working in a retail outlet on behalf or the many charities out there - is that really green at all?

Retail stores are a massive polluter and creator of waste - I mean you only need to look out the back of a store to see the tonnes of waste cardboard and other packaging being used.  All the pricing, stock holding and transportation add up to something huge - so can you really call this an ‘eco friendly’ job?

Ideas For The Future:
Start to think about everyday things in your job as well - rather than the large sweeping achievements of the great big companies.

I like to think that the people who are working for their community are making as much of a difference as those campaigners on the other side of the world.  It’s the people who just plod along day after day thinking of all the things they could do - but not doing them!

I know now isn’t the time to be giving up your job on a whim - but you could start to work through all those little things that have been nagging you.  Find out about local funding for certain projects that might apply to your business.  Promote communication methods that save energy and canteen options that can reduce food miles.

And, trying to find an eco friendly business improvement that can save your company money will always go down well with the boss - so try to find an cost effective eco friendly angle for everything!

Brilliant ideas to purify your lifestyle and feel good about it - she says….

Basically this book tries to cover all the organic and natural ways you can overcome the ‘evil’ or modern products and all the chemicals they contain.

And to prove it, she divides her advice up into 48 categories of ‘nasties’ including make-up and nappies. She explains in each case why we need to swap to more natural alternatives - by using scientific and medical arguments against each - and then offers organic, (man-made) chemical-free and more ‘natural’ products or ingredients that you could use instead.

The Book Itself:
I loved the layout of this book, and it was so easy to read that you find yourself reading chapter after chapter.  Each chapter is a 4-6 page debate as to the pro’s and con’s of each mini subject including for example, Make-Up, chocolate and toothpaste.

Hughes-Cooper helps to explain some of the main down-sides to the products we use today and offers alternatives.  There isn’t a full explanation of each due to the ’short’ nature of each chapter, and some of her answers or arguments are a bit vague or non-proven - but she certainly makes you think about all these issues while you are reading. 

She regularly uses phrases like ’this is totally natural’ - but remember that this is what they used to say about Arsenic, Lead and radio-active products that ‘glow in the dark’. It’s also important to remember that anything that can be found in plants, animals or in the earth is technically ‘natural’ in origin, but I doubt you will be in a hurry to use toadstools, uranium or snake venom in your kitchen or bathroom!

Due to the way in which you can read through this book relatively quickly, I found that I would stop for a moment after reading a particular fact and think ‘Oh my goodness, I should stop using that’ but then read on through to another section and do the same again. It seemed like page after page of doom and gloom, and worries about my health, but then I just carried on reading.  Almost like I wanted to find out how awful I was being to my own body, but then actually did nothing about it.

As with most of the ‘best things’ in this life, whether it’s growing your own veg, not flying, using only organic make-up, growing sprouted mung bens and seeking out the parabens free version of everything, the thought of it all just seems to overwhelm the normal working person.  I myself would love to consider doing most of the things Hughes-Cooper recommends in her book, but the time it would take and the possible financial costs just seem a bit prohibitive.  And it left me feeling like a bit of a failure!

Yes, there are some easy ones to achieve, like growing my own herbs in the window box and buying organic milk (as I do them already), but others I hadn’t really thought of doing, like buying hemp products instead of 100% cotton and un-bleached feminine products - which should both be quite easy to start doing. 

However, something else caught my attention as I read this book: Organic doesn’t automatically mean eco friendly - you might need a trade-off.  For example making your own smoothies, fruit juices, pies and vegetable noodles, all involve buying a new piece of electrical equipment - and creates a lot more washing up!  Neither of these are eco friendly.

Should you buy organic wines from Australia or non-organic British wines?  Think of the weight of the glass bottles coming from the other side of the world!  And there are constant references to using ‘natural’ cleaning products like white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda - but can you imagine what would happen if we all used these instead of all the shop-brought cleaners?  Vinegar is from grapes - so excessive amounts of water-hungry fruits will need to be grown to keep up with demand; and the soda is mined from the ground - so imaging habitats being destroyed to ‘naturally’ clean all the kitchens in the UK and US! 

I totally agree, however, that our actions can make us humans healthier and at the same time have less of a ‘chemical’ impact on the environment.  And sometimes the choice you have is so very simple.  However, there is still so much that you need to work quite hard to achieve, and I just don’t think that everything in this book can be achieved by a working family.

I mean I thought I was putting a reasonable effort in to the whole eco friendly/organic movement, but have only seemed to have achieved about a third of the things mentioned in the book. with maybe alf a dozen or so more in the pipeline now after reading it.  So, I hope that everyone who reads it (just like me) manages to get a few new ideas from it, because all those small things will soon add up!

Result: 3/5
If you were just reading this book the one time, then it might not really be of any use to you, other than making you think about how many toxins you and your children have absorbed over your lifetime, but if you were to use this as a reference book then things could be very different - and my Result would rise to 4/5 for it.

It certainly has it’s uses as a starting point for the layman, and has highlighted a few new things for me, but the thought of searching endlessly on the Internet for the right products, or reading label after label when I only have 10 minutes free time before having to collect the kids from school - or worse still, I have the kids in tow, then these things become unreasonable to achieve.

This book is part of the  ‘52 Briliant Ideas’ series, so I will be looking out for other relevant books to give me some more inspiration!

ISBN: 978-1-905940-57-8

National Family Week (UK) runs from May 31st to June 6th - but make yours and eco friendly one!

The event is all about celebrating Family and your time together - either indoors surrounded by books and films or outside knee-deep in grass and surrounded by bird song!

But there is no reason why your events can’t be green, local and without creating enough waste to fill your entire bin!

There are many events being held around the country that are on the official website, but why not use their guide to make a week of eco friendly fun for yourself your family and your friends.

The weeks events are running along a sort of ’schedule’ to help give people a rough plan if the week, and you can do as little or as much as you like - or create your own eco fun, but the week is as follows:

Monday - Eco Friendly Picnic:
Why can’t you arrange an event where you make an old fashioned outdoor feast, with local or organic produce brought in bulk - rather than everything in it’s own tiny bottle or individual wrapping.  Why not get one person to bake an enormous cake, one to bake a loaf of fresh bread, one to chop homegrown salad and bring home-laid hard-boiled eggs for the filling. 

Buy huge bumper packs of crisp and nibbles to share out and bring all fully reusable plastic plates and bowls to take home after.  And don’t forget some tubs to collect wild blackcurrants or fallen apples in!

Tuesday - Family Film Day:
Why not extend the picnic theme indoors with a great matinee of one or two of the families favourite films - make sure one is a classic musical to get everyone singing and dancing.  Before the first film, maybe all spend time in the kitchen mixing pastry and cakes so that when the film is over there is plenty of home-made food for everyone to tuck into before the next film!

Wednesday - Great Story Telling Day:
Rather than read other peoples stories - why not spend this day surrounded by scissors, glue and old magazines with a selection of pens and string - and have everyone create their own great adventure story from all your old magazines and bits of the outdoors like pressed flowers and leaves!  Something they can take away and keep.

Thursday - Green Road Trip:
Car or minibus, it doesn’t matter - but if there is an adventure to be had getting there is half the fun.  Rather than take the straight route - why not find the country lanes that go through tiny villages, steepled churches and fields of cows and horses.  Maybe even take in a ruined castle or 2 on the way as well - and don’t forget the camera and a tasty home-made packed lunch!

Friday - Eco Friendly House Party:
Anything goes here - whether it’s literally a party that goes on all night (without annoying the neighbours of course) or whether it’s a day-time party where people bring their family and some tasty goodies to share.  Or maybe help out with some spring cleaning or reducing and recycling.

Take one room of your home that really needs a sort out and get everyone involved. Whether it’s taking stuff to the recycling centre, community furniture project or around a friends - many hands make light work! Maybe get together to help an elderly relative or neighbour - or just your own home and ring some green changes!

Saturday - Eco Garden Fun:
Maybe this one could be an eco garden house party, where you all take it in turns to attack someones garden for the better, laying hedges, creating a wildlife pond, a bug corner, putting up bird feeders or just planting some veg! Things you never really get round to yourself - especially with the kids under your feet! Imagine to things you could achieve with 10 people instead of just you and your mum!

Whatever you choose to do, I hope you have fun - and maybe send in some photos!
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Should smaller woodland areas near villages and towns be for pets or wildlife?

Having recently moved to a new area, I am still getting used to the local woodlands, parks, commons and footpaths close to home - but I arrived at one the other day to find that the area just outside of the car park was a dog poo hot spot!

Being a nice woodland area in a small village just a 5 or 10 minute drive from a much larger town - it seemed to attract what I call the ‘for the human’ dog walkers - which are the ‘busy’ type that think that the only reason you need to take your dog out is for a wee and poo - and they fit this ‘chore’ into a slot just before work and just after they get home.

They are also the type that think that if noone sees it or their dog does it near some trees, then they don’t have to pick it up!

I’m sure that these types of woods are found all over the country and all over the world infact - but it was funny how people reacted to the news that, thanks to a recent exchange of hands, this woodland is being converted into a nature reserve over the next year or so. 

There will be heavy machinery on site to clear dangerous trees (so the site will be closed for some months) a new path for dog walkers with a big splash pool for water loving dogs (to reduce the contamination of a delicate chalk stream on site) and a poop area to reduce dog waste across the rest of the site.

The idea is that the current habitats will be enhanced to attract the wildlife that has been lost over the past 50 years or so.

The Village Meeting:
All this sounds fantastic, and I can’t wait to volunteer some of my time to help them achieve their goal - but the rest of the discussion group seemed up in arms!

The first thing they wanted to clarify was that they were a responsible dog owner - then all they talked about was where they were going to walk their dog while the site was closed and what they were supposed to do with their dog waste if there weren’t enough poo bins supplied.

Shouldn’t the owners of the land supply them with more bins? they were asking.

There wasn’t one mention of the hope of getting newts back into the pond, or clearing waste materials out of the lake to attract waterfowl.  They weren’t too sure about the 4 cattle being released to keep the grass and weeds down either or even having a ‘dog friendly’ path (I mean why can’t they just walk where they want on someone else’s land that happens to be close to their front door!).

What’s Best?
So, I was stuck in the middle: annoyed at pet owners for only caring about themselves and their dogs rather than wildlife, but then asking myself where do we expect these people to walk their dogs?  In the street?  Driving to areas that are more delicate or currently free from dogs?

If we don’t supply a spot for them close to home to ‘ruin’ - what areas will they end up destroying instead?

All around me I see baby trees that are never going to become beautiful oaks or great maples!

In lawns, grass verges, church yards and driveways, I see little trees that have spent all winter putting all their effort into growing - only to be guaranteed to last only a short time more.

With the closing in of the lawn mower season - many of these little survivors will have their tops cut off and live no more!  Yet more can be found growing in ridiculous spots - like a crack in the concrete or up against your home - and will never be allowed to grow to full size!

But, you can help them!  You could give a tree a helping hand - in the same way that we need them to clean our air and feed and protect our wildlife in return.  And it won’t cost you a penny - nature has given you them for free!

So why not move them to a better place while why they are still only tiny, and give them a better chance at growing up!

But How Do I know What A Baby Tree Looks Like?
Luckily for you, spotting a baby tree is so very easy as they nearly all look virtually identical at the moment - growing about an inch or two high out of the grass - see the picture below:

All baby trees grow these same 2 leaves as their first leaves so once you have seen one you will know what they all look like!

It’s only the following set of leaves that are the same shape as their adult leaves - so in a way it is sometimes a little surprise to find out what it is exactly that you have saved!

It could be a mighty oak, a quivering willow or a festive holly tree - but either way - it is a tree that now stands a much better chance of survival if you move it to a flower border, by your hedge or wherever.  As long as it’s not on the lawn!

Watch Them Grow:
Now don’t worry about there being too many trees in your garden if you save them all, as these little babies take years before they will affect your garden - and many of them will become lunch for bunnies and deer or die naturally.

And it will take something like an oak about 30/40 years before it’s big enough for you to climb!  However, they could make a great hedge to make your garden more secluded.

Some of these trees will be smaller trees anyway, like holly, and so will actually look great as they grow up - as well as feeding the winter wildlife!

Maybe take photos of them growing over the years to see your work being rewarded.  And pictures of their first leaves can help you to identify them - and maybe help you decide where the best spot to move them to is.  

I mean, you wouldn’t want a great pine tree right next to the house, and a holly bush close to a path or garden bench could be quite uncomfortable! But an elderberry tree could be great near the kitchen to make some great summer drinks!

Have fun saving your free trees - and our environment!

We probably all owe money on something - but it isn’t doing anyone any favours!

Nobody likes to owe anyone any money - but if you needed any persuasion to pay it off sooner - think about all the good you could be doing with the interest instead:

• £4 a month - become a member of WWF to help save wildlife
• £20 one off donation - help Great Ormond Street Hospital
• £ANY - a year - buy fair trade food instead
• £ANY a quarter - change your energy supplier to a green one

I know we don’t like to spend extra money on things if we don’t have to, but if you are happy to pay that loan interest, or that credit card payment - why not use the same money for other more useful things - rather than just paying the banks!

Pay Off Your Bills Sooner!
I know it sounds obvious, but many people are quite happy to keep paying the minimum payments - and aren’t usually in and hurry to pay them early either.

We all want more money in our pockets - and who can blame us - but paying interest for anything is a complete waste of our money and our money’s potential.

Rather than paying £50 a month for nothing, that money could have helped buy a chunk of rainforest, saved the lives of 100 children in the developing world or helped build a wind farm instead of mining for more oil!

Change Your Life:
By working out how much you are paying a year in interest, you might really see what a difference you could be making to your own life as well.

I’m not talking about the ‘happy feeling’ of not having any debts, I’m talking about all the things you could have done for yourself with the money.

If you are paying a loan repayment of around £100 a month - that is £1200 a year that you could have spent on a training course to change careers, £1200 on stock or services if you were starting an eco business or £1200 to spend on eco renovations to your home.

If you are renting it could mean spending that extra £100 on a larger property, and if you own your home, that money could be paying off your mortgage a lot sooner.

Get Started:
So, speak to an independent financial advisor about the best way to pay off your bills for a better life for you!

Don’t always rely on your same old bank - especially if it them who you owe the money too as they want to keep you with them!  They may show you a better deal from their current one - but it will only be to their next best one - not necessarily the best product for you.

I’m not saying that your bank (or any bank) is trying to keep you in debt, it’s just that as a business, they would rather you were in debt with them rather than anyone else!  You can’t blame them really can you.

So by using independent or government-run financial agencies, you can be sure of getting a fair deal and great advice.

Get Sorting:
And, to help you out, why not refresh your own thinking to get things moving - after all what you spend on other things can’t go towards paying off your bills - and there could be a better eco friendly option too!

For example, try not to subscribe to magazines that you don’t really read - especially if they are available for less money as online magazines (no paper, no postage, etc).

By reducing your dependence on processed foods and by growing your own vegetables - you could seriously cut down on your food bills, and the same goes for electrical goods - turning off things you only use once in a while can reduce energy bills. 

And if you want to buy new clothes - make sure you sell your old ones first!

These little critters will eat 100’s of garden pests and help to pollinate 1000’s of plants.
 
By encouraging these little understood bugs into your garden could really improve your success in the plant world, helping to kills off pests, help generate seeds and fruits throughout the year.

So lets find out about these very different little insects and see what they can do for us - and what we can do for them.

Bumble Bees:
These are the first things we think of when we talk about bees, and we often see them in the garden as a big, furry bumbling bee, humming loudly as it moves through the plants in our yards.

Bumble Bee

These bees are not kept in hives and actually live in holes in the ground, compost heap, disused bird houses or old trees.  At the end of the summer the queen is mated and heads of alone to live out the winter before producing offspring the following spring.

She generates plenty of offspring and a colony could number up to 300 individuals as it lives out the summer feeding on and pollinating our garden plants and trees.

They have a sting, but rarely use it.

Honey Bees:
These are the ones that are kept in hives and produce plenty of honey - which bee-keepers use for human consumption.  They don’t need human intervention and can make their own hives in trees and roof spaces if necessary.

They are similar in shape and size to wasps rather than bumble bees, but don’t have the pinched-in ‘waist’ of the wasp.

They always live in large colonies and cannot survive alone for very long.  They can, however, travel and arrive in your garden in a huge swarm of up to 20,000 individuals!  Quite a site to witness as they settle as one writhing mass on a tree or building.

They are rarely ever dangerous to humans unless you antagonise them - although they will sting you.  Experts can be called in to move the swarm quite easily to a less populated environment if you don’t want quite that many in your garden!

Solitary Bees:
The other types of bees live in loose groups but do not swarm or form colonies.

They are similar in appearance to honey bees, and can be used commercially to pollinate crops just like the more popular honey bees.

There are about 250 types on solitary bees in the UK, and many live in small holes in the ground but stay close to other solitary bees spread out over some distance.

Wasps:
Although they send us into a fear frenzy on site due to their habit of stinging us - they can be very beneficial to your garden or allotment.

The queen will set up a nest of mushy paper and fibres in the spring and start to produce larvae to build up her colony - which can reach 20,000 in a few weeks if the conditions are excellent!

Intricate Wasps Nest In Trees

Adult wasps eat nectar and sugary liquids, but they feed their young on insects, so can be seen feeding off plants and killing aphids too! 1 worker wasp could catch around 100 aphids a day off your plants to feed their young.

However, if the colony becomes too large the adults may require more natural food than your garden can supply and so they will turn to other sources - like our kitchen for jams, bee hives for honey etc. and this is when they come into conflict with humans.

But as with all the different bees, if you can tolerate them around your homes and gardens you can get yourself some free insect control and some free fruit and flower generation!

So what are you doing to encourage them to your garden?

Did you find that you got better at identifying any birds because of it?

I can now tell the difference between a house sparrow and a tree sparrow, and my little niece can now identify a magpie!  I know about the different stripes on the greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers and the different ’spots’ on the breast of the song thrush and mistle thrush.

And I found out how much easier it was with binoculars and a small guide book!

I had great fun doing the bird counts with my family.  I helped my mum in her tiny urban garden (12 species), my niece in her huge suburban garden (7 species) - and helped myself in my woodland garden! (9 species).

We saw great spotted woodpeckers, pied wagtails, wrens, song thrushes and bullfinches - as well as the more common blackbirds, robins, magpies, crows and starlings. 

However, to my suprise, the tiny urban garden had the most different species of all 3 sites, with the huge garden not having any unique species - they shared half of their 7 species with both the other sites!

And it didn’t even have the largest number of 1 type either - mum’s got 26+ starlings in hers!

I was glad to see the wrens and the house sparrows at my mum’s as well as they are not common where I live at the moment.  And the starlings chirping away in their ‘alien’ fashion took me back to my childhood!

However, I’m not too bothered about them being ‘missing’ as I get all sorts of other amazing species like red kites, buzzards, jays and woodpeckers here - and I even saw a woodcock the other day!

How did your counts go - and have you entered your results on the RSPB website yet?