It’s that time of year again, when thousands of British homeowners get involved in the biggest wildlife survey in the world, the Big Garden Bird Watch. For the past 35 years the RSPB has been asking people to spare just one hour counting the birds in their Garden to help us find out the state of British wildlife. This year the Big Garden Bird Watch came to Kinneil Estate.
Joanne, our Community Engagement Officer, is guest blogger today, and will tell us all about it.
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What did we see?
On Saturday the 25th of January Kinneil Estate played host to the biggest wildlife survey in the world, the Big Garden Bird Watch. Although the weather threatened to soak us visitors turned up ready and raring to help count the birds on the estate. All in all, with their help, we managed to count 18 different species of birds in just a few hours on the 25th of January. Sightings ranged from the reliable blackbird which was one of the most commonly counted birds last year to the tufted duck, a more unusual bird for our BGBW list, not many gardens have a pond big enough for this critter! A list of everything we saw is at the end of this post.
A tufted duck, not many gardens can boast one of these! Photo credit: Ben Hall, rspb-images.com
Two birds that were noticeably absent from Kinneil were the House Sparrow and the Starling. These birds were once a common and welcome sight in gardens up and down Britain, but previous BGBW’s have shown us that their numbers have been decreasing drastically. Results from BGBW 2014 are still coming in, so we’ll have to wait until the results are released to find out how sparrows and starlings are coping this year.
The house sparrow, once a common sight,. How many did you spot this year? Photo credit: Andy Hay, rspb-images.com
What did we do?
Whilst many of our visitors had done the Big Garden Bird Watch before, we had some newcomers wanting to find out what it was all about. For those who needed to brush up on their birding skills, or for anyone who wanted to show theirs off, there was the Bird Hunt trail. Visitors were given a map of the grounds and went off to explore the estate and find the bird fact cards hidden in trees and on top of log piles. Many visitors came back cold and wet but enthusiastically waving a map declaring “All of them, we found them all!”
Visitors also had the opportunity to get stuck in making some bird cakes to take home for their gardens. It’s a simple recipe which will encourage feathered friends to make a visit to their garden (The recipe and other activities can be found here http://www.rspb.org.uk/youth/makeanddo/activities ). We even brought along a special ingredient for those who were brave enough... worms eek! Lots of you got involved with making the bird cakes and I left at the end of the day with a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that Falkirk's birds would be well fed this winter!
Our visitors had fun making bird cakes, it's messy work but someone's got to do it! Photo credit: David Anderson
Kinneil's Species List
Blackbird, blue tit, black headed gull, carrion crow, coot, common gull, chaffinch, dunnock, goosander, great tit, magpie, mallard, moorhen, mute swan, robin, tufted duck, woodpigeon, wren