Missing birds

I totally agree. Even though I left a note in the garden to say I wanted every bird that normally visits my garden for a free meal to make the effort to pop in between 8:30am and 9:30 am, not everyone attended.

Here's a serious suggestion. Why not ask everyone to do the garden birdwatch for at least an hour. Then, when submitting your results and answering questions about your garden, add a question to ask how many hours you did the gardenwatch for.

And just to name and shame those birds that cannot read, we normally also see the following:

Sparrowhawk

Mistle Thrush

Wren

Redwing

Fieldfare

Moorhen

Bullfinch

Nuthatch

Treecreeeper

I couldn't reply using Google Chrome, so had to switch to Firefox.

I had the same problem, I did leave it late yesterday, it was nearly 4pm and was a gloomy day. I thought I would set up the ironing in front of the window so I could multi-task, bad idea, had to move it back a bit as the birds could see the movement. Also my glasses steamed up.

When I tried to watch the birds it was such a gloomy afternoon that it was hard to distinguish between blue tits and great tits, sparrows and dunnocks.

However I duly recorded what I saw, wasn't quite an hour, I think I probably should have got out the binoculars but I really don't get on with them.

Tried again early this morning - the sun was low and directly in my eyes. Now I had exactly the same problem as you, normally we have 6 to 8 blue tits and other assorted tits, as well as numerous wood pigeons, at least a pair of collared doves and one or more of their offspring, blackbirds, wrens, robins - up to 3, and sometimes a sparrowhawk.

This weekend only managed 4 blackbirds, two blue tits, a coal tit, a couple of dunnocks and sparrows - if I submit these results it looks like there aren't many around of the usually numerous birds - should I submit it?

We had the same problem - the birds weren't obliging!

Although not keen ornithologists we regularly look out at the weekend, as we back on to a river. The ducks and moorhens keep us amused for hours. But we're also lucky enough to enjoy the regular sight of 2 pairs of kingfishers, grey heron, a green woodpecker, coal tits, dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, great crested grebes and even the occasional shag, but even the blackbirds were missing today! What we did get to see appeared during the last 5 minutes (we watched from 9:30 - 10:30). Yet any other weekend we may see any of these birds. It was like they knew we were watching and deliberately stayed away. The collared doves were the most noticeable - all year round we have so many, yet today we saw just one.

Me too! - our neighbour put up scaffolding on Friday and used it all weekend - exit all the ususl birds that visit the garden. So would be good to have a space to write a list of our usual bird visitors.

I sympathise with those missing birds in their hour, but the fact that the wren was missing from my list has highlighted the fact that I have not seen one for quite a while.

Regretably not seeing a species, notwithstanding unusual disturbance during your hour, can be very significant in a survey such as this and flag a potential population crash as a result of , for example, the disasterous weather in December.

i know what you mean, whether its because the birds found nicer food in other people's gardens or not i can't tell, but there were plenty of birds overhead, but only a few stopped to eat, i only had a female blackbird pop in, no males, and last year I had a sparrow or two arrive, but none this year.

Also only one woodpigeon, there's usually a few of these plodding about, so I definitely had less birds than last year, but at least some showed up - the dried mealworms were gobbled up in no time.

Agree totally Chirpy !

I asked a question earlier on in the forum - " can we split the hour " ?   - didn't get a very helpful reply .  I was just thinking of splitting it into two or three sections, as different species seem to visit at different times of day .  For example, when we did our ' hour' on Saturday, we just had one pheasant visiting; the following morning ( just as it was getting light ) we had 7 female and 2 male pheasants !   Hard to decide which hour of the day to pick !

PS Why can't we access previous posts ???

I put out more food this morning and lo and behold the missing collared doves were first there, at least one of them! I couldn't hang around to see what else arrived, but there were loads of little birds of several varieties the weekend before, and the pair of woodpigeons (sometimes up to five woodpigeons sit solemnly waiting for their turn balancing on my small seed feeder seed catcher tray) and pair of collared doves are daily visitors, the dogs love to try and scare them, so I don't think the weather has changed in just a week.

Collared doves are not terribly worried about being rushed by a manic little dog, they are high up on the bird feeder, and sometimes just pop up a little higher and sit there taunting the dogs, woodpigeons on the other hand (and probably from bad experiences being caught in the greenhouse) give the dogs a splendid result, flying off noisily in a panic with a dog in hot pursuit barking into the air at the bird. Any other bird just discretely vanishes into the hedge when they hear the door being unlocked.

We had dreadful snow in 2009 which lay for weeks. No wren appeared after the thaw. November 2010 heavy snow again until into January. I think my wrens are gone. Live in very rural Aberdeenshire. Also look forward to seeing the results of the count. Mind you, I think there might be a few cheats out there!

OK I admit it - I had to come in to answer the phone right at the end of my hour so missed a few minutes so I felt justified later on in counting the 11 long tailed tits that flew in to my feeders about an hour later on.  Is that cheating?  It seemed too good to miss, I thought!