Monday 22 February 2010

The Big Garden Birdwatch

Don’t get me wrong, we dutifully completed our big garden birdwatch on Saturday 30th January but yesterday was a little different. We were quite disappointed with our species list and numbers on the day of the true RSPB survey and were a little upset when we submitted them online that they did not reflect the true variety that we get in the garden. Yesterday made up for all that.
Granted, it was not a normal day as somewhere between 5am and 9am (when we were in the land of nod) we had four inches of snow. Lovely big fluffy snowflakes were falling when we got out of bed and the world was white. I had my first cup of tea and before I had had a second I had guilted myself into plodding out to the garage, finding the birdfood and filling all the feeders to the brim, as well as liberally scattering some on the snow. It was definitely worth it.
We had many visitors, but the most exciting of which didn’t want my seed – they were more intent on the thousands of berries in the cotoneaster jungle at the top of the garden.

My photos do not do them justice as it was my first time playing with the new lens on the camera.


Our total species list for the day was:

  • Fieldfares x lots and lots – approximately 20
  • Song Thrush x 3
  • Blackbirds x 5
  • Robins x 3
  • Great tit
  • Blue tit
  • Mrs Bullfinch
  • Sparrows x 5
  • Woodpigeons x 2
  • Starlings x at least 17
  • and a Magpie

2 comments:

Scriptor Senex said...

A good collection. Keep your eye out for Redwings with the Fieldfares - they often flock together.

23 February 2010 at 18:38  
Helen said...

Good to have you blogging again. As always I am jealous of your snow. Here we only have rain, rain and more rain :-(

23 February 2010 at 21:52