The week of the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch is upon us! There is still time to register online for this weekend’s survey. Click the link at the bottom of this blog to get involved.
Around half a million people across the UK took part in 2014 – with over 22,500 taking part from Wales. RSPB Cymru is urging more people of Wales to take part this year, making it bigger and better!
The wildlife survey, now in its 36th year, provides the RSPB with an important snapshot of garden bird populations in winter and has helped to highlight some dramatic declines in UK garden birds over the last three decades. For the second year running, the RSPB is also asking participants to log the other wildlife they see in their outside spaces, to help the charity build an overall picture of how important our gardens are for giving nature a home.
In this second blog I want to introduce you to the less common visitors you may be adding to your list during your one hour watching time.
The first straddles the common/ less frequent visitor category, but I thought I would include it here as the male and female of the species are strikingly different. If you are feeding birds you will invariably attract the attention of the local Sparrowhawk if you have one. This top predator is not always a welcome visitor to people’s gardens, but if one does happen to swoop through and try to catch one the birds on your feeding station, providing a record of its presence is vital. The very fact you have Sparrowhawk in your area means you have a pretty healthy ecosystem to support a top predator. If there wasn’t a suitable food supply to support it, then it would simply be elsewhere. The female is much larger than the male of the species, in fact one of the largest size differential in sexes anywhere in the bird world. The female is a wonderful chestnut mottled brown, where the male is more of a blue-ish grey and is twenty five percent smaller. Both have the stripped chests, the male with a subtle peachy blush from its cheeks down to the shoulders of the wings. The Peregrine Falcon and the Kestrel are always held as the UK’s favourite birds of prey, but let’s face it, you are highly unlikely to get either of them in your garden, but the chances are there will be a smattering of records for the Sparrowhawk, and I for one would be chuffed if I managed to tick one Sunday.
One of the great aspects of seeing the results of the mass of data when it is published several months after this weekend is watching the rise and rise of Siskins and Goldfinches up the table. Goldfinches have been common place in the garden for quite some time now, but their much smaller cousin the Siskin is a more recent arrival. It is simply becoming a garden bird rather than a woodland bird because of our wonderful habit of putting food out, especially niger seeds. From personal experience I can also tell you that if you put shelled sunflower hearts out (or RSPB’s own No Mess Sunflower Mix) then these little finches will appear in droves! This diminutive canary like bird can resemble a Greenfinch, but obviously much smaller and it has a distinct black wing bar. The male sport a fetching black cap, with the females being a striped green, this is a wonderful time of year to attract them to your garden, as the numbers in the southern half of the country can be swollen by northern migrants. They are not particularly shy birds, and another wonderful addition to your garden list.
Far shier is the wonderfully coloured Bullfinch. If you are blessed to have these wonderful seed eaters in your garden then you are very lucky indeed. Another bird with expensive tastes, the same sunflower heart mix was the best way to attract them into my old garden, and indeed this almost semi urban one I have now. The male is unmistakable, his blush red chest and ink black head makes him a striking fellow. The female is wonderfully attractive too, being a delightful chestnut brown, with the same black cap. A wonderful example of sexual di-morphism, a term to impress your friends with! Basically it means the male and female are strikingly different in colours, the male a bright to show off and attract a mate, the females far dowdier, but able to camouflage themselves whilst sitting on the nest.
Our final character is another chart climber as well as a tree trunk climber. The Great Spotted Woodpecker is undergoing a bit of a boom of the moment. In a wonderful example of how nature just does what it does and the influence of politics sometimes lags behind, whilst the debate over whether the Great Spotted Woodpecker should be reintroduced into Ireland or not raged, the birds themselves settled the argument by flying across the Irish Sea and getting on with the job of recolonising the island anyway.
If you live near any kind of woods, and you put some fat cakes or fat balls out, if there are Great Spotted Woodpeckers about then they will find you. They are like a magnet for them. We once had five individuals (2 adults, 3 youngsters) in the garden at once. Quite easily recognised and much, much larger than the rare Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, these birds are rapidly climbing the most seen species charts, breaking into the top twenty. The mild wet winter has done nothing to stop me believing they will probably climb a few places again this year. The abundance of dead wood after recent storms provides even more of their natural food, which are the burrowing beetles and grubs that eat this decaying matter. My final ID tip in these blogs is another one to impress friends with. The male and female can be ID’d by simply checking if it has a red cap or not. The male always sports a red cap; the female is black all over. As with all birding knowledge there are perils! Avoid their breeding season to show off of new found skills, as the juveniles all sport red heads for the first months after fledging!
There ends my brief roundup of some of the birds you may see over this weekend if you are taking part. You are still able to register online and print out any information you may require from the Big Garden Birdwatch part of the RSPB Website. You have until February 13th to get your results in, and whilst you are writing that date in your diary, flip the page and write National Nest Box Day on the next page on the 14th. With a pair of Blue Tits showing interest in my nest box this week... I will hopefully be returning to this subject in the coming weeks.
Until then ... happy birdwatching this weekend!
All images © Anthony Walton