The big garden Bird Watch

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is a charity that looks after and protects the interests of our wild bird population. Each years in January they hold a national garden or park, bird survey to assess how the population of our indigenous garden birds are coping. I've just posted the result from my garden bird watch on the RSPB web site.

I sat in the conservatory with a cup of coffee yesterday morning between 9 and 10 am and counted the highest numbers of each species of bird I saw. Really hard work! I've been doing this survey now for about five years. This was an average year. Much better than last year though when the weather on the watch weekend was so awful and during the whole hour I chose to watch I saw not one single bird. Not one in the whole hour! Not even flying over.

We have always fed the garden birds where ever we've lived. Last year we bought ourselves and fancy bird feeding station but we still use the trees to hang nut and seed feeders, half coconuts, bones, bacon rinds. We've always had a good variety of different birds feeding. As you can see the cheeky squirrels try their hardest to pinch the bird food. Mice love the bits dropped on the ground and the cat bless her loved the mice and the birds. Sadly she died from old age just before Christmas so the birds are less threatened this year. I wish the mice population weren't though. Yesterday just before I started the count there was a Willow Tit feeding. He's quite a rare visitor and this morning there was a colourful Bull Finch picking at the seeds. He hasn't been around for a while. The little colony of Long Tail Tits have been shy recently too. Plenty of natural food in the nearby Country Park I suppose.

On Friday morning driving home from swimming I spotted a green parakeet feeding on the road verge. A most unusual site for around here. I haven't seen one of those this far north before although Dave said he had. There's quite a colony built up in London and in the South of England. They are escapee aviary birds. I also saw the Spotted Woodpecker. He not a bird I see often although there's a few in the Park. If you walk around the lakes and woodland in the park you can spot a large variety of different birds.

These last couple of weeks have been very unseasonable mild. The birds in the morning are singing as if it's already spring. On my nightly wander to the bathroom I can hear the Robin trilling away on the branches of the trees at the back of our garden. This is at between 3 and 4 am but he's often here singing all night.

As I write this post I can see the sun setting out from my office window. The birds have been for their evening feed and bathed in our little stream leading to the pond. A black bird is squawking it's alarm call from some where along the lane and the last few starlings are flying home to their roosts.