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This weekend is the Big Garden Birdwatch weekend – an annual event where around half a million people count birds in their gardens for an hour and send in the counts.
We’ve run this scheme for over 30 years and it has taken off spectacularly in the last 10 or so – entering data online has helped with that (although the paper option is still available).
I usually do two counts over the weekend – one at our home and one at my Mum’s (it’s a good excuse to get invited for Sunday lunch!). This will be the first year for ages that neither of our children is home as they are now both at university - the BGBW has become a part of family life for us.
This year’s count will be very interesting as it follows a breeding season in 2009 which was thought to be very successful for many species and a prolonged winter freeze which only ended recently. Will bird numbers be up or down?
Maybe it’s time to stick my neck out! I think we will see declines in numbers in many species – but I might well be wrong. I’d be very surprised if numbers of long-tailed tits and wrens are not appreciably lower than last year. These are species which are known to suffer in cold weather – they are tiny after all and need to feed pretty continually through the day to have enough food to fuel their high metabolic rates and to keep them going through the long winter nights.
Other species where I think that there might be declines include dunnock and robin. But maybe redwing and fieldfare numbers will be up – they flooded into gardens from the frozen countryside a few weeks ago and it’s possible some of them remain thanks to the generosity of garden bird feeders.
But we’ll see! Or at least we will if you take part and send in your observations. It’s easy, it’s fun, you might see nothing (and we’d still like to hear from you if that’s the case) or you might see all sorts of interesting birds just by investing that hour!
We’ll have the first preliminary results on Wednesday next week although the data will come in for a long time after that. I’ll let you know what your observations have told us!
Herb woman - our website is still slow - we are sorry about that and fixing it as quikly as possible. It's not too bad most of the time but it comes and goes a bit! We tested the 'password forgotten' function straight after I picked up your comment and couldn't find anything wrong with it so that's a mystery. Sorry again for the hassle - thanks again for taking part.
Herb woman - I aplogise for any problems you have had. I'm sure it doesn't make you feel better but you seem to have been unlucky - the vast majority of people have had a very smooth experience. Thank you for letting us know. I've passed it on to our technical staff. I hope you enjoyed watching the birds though. And your observations will help build up a picture of what's happening to our birds - so thank you again!
a pity the website hangs half way through entering my counts. And the forgotten password thing doesn't work, I've had to re-register.
Hi Mark yes it will be interesting especially as lots of people been feeding garden birds a lot.Interestingly we have more Dunnocks in the garden than ever and during cold weather always seem to find something but couldn't tell what unless it was bits and pieces dropped by other species.