Once again that time of year is upon us. The RSPB’s annual garden census begins today, with the Make Your Nature Count survey. Unlike the Big Garden Birdwatch of earlier in the year this time you get to count everything … yes everything!
As well as counting bird species and numbers, you are asked to keep an eye out in particular for their fledglings. There are plenty about, that period of warm weather caused an insect bloom which can only benefit those needy birds still in the nest. Over the past few days I have watched Great Tits and Blue Tits feeding on aphids, spiders and crane flies on just one rose bush in my front garden. It seems every nook and cranny out there is being investigated at the moment. I really wouldn’t want to be an invertebrate right now; you’re on just about everyone’s menu!
I have one Robin fledgling in my garden currently. There are two parent birds around calling him, but he seems a fairly independent fellow, and has been becoming bolder as the days go on. Baby Robins are fairly easy to identify, but they can look a bit like a Dunnock at first glance. They are smaller versions of the adult Robin as you would expect, and they are brown and speckled at the moment, they will develop their characteristic red breast over the coming weeks.
The other fledglings I have in the garden are Starlings. They usually arrive with the parent birds, but again can be independent enough to stick around after the parent birds have gone. I get quite a lot of twitter messages with a picture attached asking me to identify a strange bird at this time of year, nearly always it is a Starling fledgling. The best way of describing them is as a dusty chocolate coloured bird, not far off adult Starling size. They have little markings on their feathers, they are a uniformed colour, one final identification tip … they will be the ones kicking up all the fuss in the garden!!
If the picture turns out not to be of a young Starling, it will probably be a Blackbird fledgling. Another two toned brown speckled ball of feathers that will be skulking around your borders looking for food from mum!
Those of you who live in a more urban environment will hopefully have House Sparrows nesting. It would fill me with unbridled joy to hear this year that sparrows have had a good year; they have had such a decline in numbers that they need all the success they can get. House Sparrow fledglings are simply smaller version of the female adult birds; the parents normally have a small number of their young feeding with them together on the ground.
It was my great pleasure last year to see a parent Goldfinch feeding its young right outside the window. I had never seen that before, and it is what I love about these “citizen science” weekends (or in the case of Make Your Nature count, the whole week), it gets you involved in the world outside your kitchen window or patio doors. You may notice something that had so far eluded you. By simply recording and submitting your results and taking an hour out to sit and watch you can give future conservation projects masses of amounts of data for future planning and strategies. As this year’s tagline says, have a look and have a listen for all that slithers, tweets, forages or snuffles in your garden who knows what surprises await you!
Late update to this blog. It is day one of the Make Your Nature Count week and garden has come to life with fledglings today. The squeaking noise that has been coming from behind my shed has turned out to be a Great Tit family, and the hazel tree has a number of Blue Tit fledglings being fed by mum and dad ... it looks like it is going to be a good week to do the count!
© All Images Anthony Walton