How Did Your Great Garden Bird Count Go For The RSPB?
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?
