Garden Bird Watch

I enjoyed my bird count again this year - I watch the birds all year round as I have two tables and feed year round.  I have thought this for a while now, that maybe we should do a count mid-year, around June/July to see what we have.  The difficulty would be that there would be a number of young birds who are not so easy to identify, but it would be an interesting comparison.  I know I get a few more species in the summer months that I don't get in the winter - i.e.siskins, goldfinches, greenfinches etc.  What does anyone else think?

  • Hi Patricia thanks for taking part, did you have any unusual visitors or was it a case of the regulars taking centre stage?

    We do hold a survey during the summer called the RSPB Make Your Nature Count, it has been going for a few years now and takes other wildlife into account as well as birds. However, the BTO's garden birdwatch, Birdtrack and Natures Calendar are other surveys which you might like to help with.

    Warden Intern at Otmoor.

  • I have noticed that,I only get starlings and blue tits in spring and autum.

  • I agree and I wrot similar in my post. Would be nice if we could record randomly through the year what we see as some days are better than others. Saw some baby birds today but couldnt tell you what they were. Thats a bit early, prob due to the mild weather, theyre getting confused. Bit like us really! Lol

  • Hi Patricia.  I joined the BTO and do bird counts on a weekly basis.  I really enjoy it.  I started in April last year, and at the end of the year I printed off all my statistics and entertained myself a while putting them into graphs.  Now I can see at a glance at what time of year different species were present, and it's going to be really interesting to compare this year.  For instance I saw a song thrush in my garden last week for the first time in months and was able to look back at the records and see at a glance that I hadn't had one since last May.

    See my Flickr photos here

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/115745582@N04/