How on earth do you count an unruly clan of starlings that descend in your garden? Equally, my sparrows are numerous and spend the day in the hedges when not eating or bathing. If disturbed they appear from all corners of the garden at once!
Cheers, Linda.
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Hi Sparrow.I know exactly who you feel. I done my first count last year and counting the starlings and sparrows was one of my biggest worries. Something I tried which helped was to have a practice count just a few days before to get used to counting biggish numbers, which helped my to get into the mood for counting. Another thing I found was the mind seems to work differently when watching garden birds for statistical reasons as opposed to just for pleasure. Although it is great fun and a brilliant excuse for just looking out the window for an hour.
Paul
Warning! This post contains atrocious spelling, and terrible grammar. Approach with extreme edginess.
Hi Heron,
I posted the same question to the BGBW 2010 forum that appeared briefly 2 days ago, then disappeared again. I had a reply from someone who kindly gave me a link to a website that sells golf score clickers. They told me they use this clicker to count large numbers of birds and that it works to a point. Unfortunately, the forum has been taken off, along with the reply I had, so I have lost the web link.
I am registered with the BTO garden bird watch, and count birds for a short period on a daily basis, submitting the counts weekly every Sunday. I am afraid I just estimate the numbers of sparrows, and submit the same number every week. My regular starlings are easy enough as they hang out most of the day and there are usually about 6 or 7, but if I get an unruly flock during my counting period I estimate those as best I can. I am just concerned my estimated numbers may be way out and wondered how everyone else counted large numbers.
Hi Sparrow, I assume you mean this kind of gadget
I usually count up to 5 and then double the figures so 5, 10, 20, 40 etc.. with large flocks, this is the best way of estimating numbers!
Hi,
I think it is also worth mentioning, you don't need to worry if your count is a bit out. If you get so many starlings they are difficult to count, just make your best count. If your count is 35 and the figures is actually 31 or 39, it doesn't really matter. It would however start to make a difference to the overall results if there were actually 31 and the observer counted a substantially different number like 5 or 55. This is pretty unlikely of course! We're probably only going to be a few out at worst.
We're very lucky with this survey. So many people take part and we combine the results from hundreds of thousands of gardens to calculate results. We don't look at individual gardens. Even when we calculate results from one county, we have several thousand gardens to combine.
Happy watching!
Richard
For more information and to find your nearest Feed the Birds Day events, visit www.rspb.org.uk/feedthebirds