I prepared myself to sit for a hour to count the birds! My garden has been full of many different birds especially with the snow on the ground.
Pen and printed sheet to hand. what a let down the tits, blue,great, long tailed, coal or the wag tail did not show!
One lone starling at the feeder where normally there are at least five,
The same for the magpies, jackdaws, finches and bull finches not even the rat who has been stealing food.
The green wood pecker did not grace me with his presence. I was grateful for the appearance of the lone jay and pheasent who visited my
normally clapham junction of a garden the word must of gone out that I was watching them with pen and paper in hand - Kate
Hi Kate,
Oh dear. Here's hoping you have better luck over the Big Garden Birdwatch weekend (29-30 Jan).
Best wishesLucinda
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I too am preparing for the big garden bird watch. my first time in doing it and looking forward to it . my garden is full of birds at the moment and my observation site will be in my summer house over looking my river with my camping stove on and kettle boiling!
david williams
Kate I have just registered for the garden bird watch and I have the fear my garden will be deserted on the day! Lets keep our fingers crossed that doesn't happen.
Recently moved and am looking forward to creating a garden that will attract wildlife
Unknown said: I too am preparing for the big garden bird watch. my first time in doing it and looking forward to it . my garden is full of birds at the moment and my observation site will be in my summer house over looking my river with my camping stove on and kettle boiling!
Sounds wonderful!
I hope that this didn't happen because the birds could see you. My plan is to rig up something across the windows where I usually sit, so that I can watch through a slot, like the window slots they have in the hides at reserves. Then I will be more confident that the birds won't notice me.
The other thing that I wondered was that I could designate myself 2 separate hour long watching sessions. Maybe one in the morning, and another one in the afternoon. Then I can submit the results for the better one. :-)
Best wishes Chris
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Woodpecker said: The other thing that I wondered was that I could designate myself 2 separate hour long watching sessions. Maybe one in the morning, and another one in the afternoon. Then I can submit the results for the better one. :-)
I wasn't sure if it had to be an hour or at least an hour but if the former I had considered watching for some time and recording the time of each arrival. Then you could pick the precise hour with the most species eg. 2.37pm - 3.37pm.
But is such fixing against the point of the survey and will it distort the results?
Syntarsus said:But is such fixing against the point of the survey and will it distort the results?
Hi Syntarsus
Yes it is and it would distort the results. The Big Garden Birdwatch is designed to collate results from watching garden birds for one hour
Yes a very quiet day, a blackbird pair, a Sparrow, one Coal Tit, three Magpies, couple of Starlings, couple of Pigeons and a Robin. That was all we saw.
That said, birds have been few in number recently and I wonder whether the cold weather has done some real damage.
Very similar experience, 4 blackbirds, 2 blue tits, 1 coal tit, 1 longtailed tit, 3 pigeons, 1 robin, and favourite new this year to my garden the pied wagtail he seems fairly tame aswell if you go out when hes in the garden he doesn't always fly off.
The other day my garden was alive with various tits including the ones above and the great tits, they were all over but not on sunday when i did my count.
Sparrows seem to be very rare this year in my garden theres usually loads.
Its interesting to hear what other people see i live in a city so dont get really interesting birds you get in the country.
Happy bird watching.