With Big Garden Birdwatch 2018 rapidly approaching RSPB Scotland’s Jess Barrett takes us through all things Birdwatch in this blog.
Get ready for Big Garden Birdwatch 2018!
Did you know that Big Garden Birdwatch is the largest wildlife survey in the world? It’s not long now until we’ll be asking you to spend an hour of your time counting the birds you see in your garden – you can register online – so here’s a celebration of all things Birdwatch and what your sightings have revealed over the last few years.
Scotland’s top five
The birds that make up Scotland’s top five have been the same for many years; you have to go back to 2011 to find a time when house sparrows weren’t top of the spots, and for the last few years starlings and chaffinches have alternated between second and third place.
In 2017 house sparrows were top, followed by starlings, chaffinches, and blackbirds with blue tits rounding off our top five most counted birds in Scottish gardens. How many of these feathered visitors do you get in your garden enjoying the food you leave out for them?
1. House sparrows
These wee brown birds are found across much of Scotland and will be known to many of us whether you live in a town, city or the countryside. I think a lot of us will have wandered past a hedge and hearing a whole flock of them chirruping away to each other at some point! While numbers of these characterful birds have fallen sharply since the 1970s recent data suggests the population in Scotland is increasing. You can help them by creating a safe home for them to bring up their chicks – find out how here.
2. Starlings
A murmuration of starlings flying in perfect synchronicity with each other like a dancing cloud across the sky is one of the true delights to see at this time of year. Starlings really are beautiful birds – what might appear to be simple black feathers from afar reveal themselves to be glossy with a glint of green and purple and delicate white dots on closer inspection. Their second place ranking may give the impression that there are many starlings around but in actual fact their numbers have suffered from severe declines. Leaving parts of your lawn long gives these birds a helping hand as it provides ideal habitat for the insects and grubs that starlings love to feed on.
3. Chaffinches
While chaffinches make it into the top three of Scottish Birdwatch sightings they are further down the UK rankings for 2017 at number nine. As many of you may have found from watching these colourful finches in your garden they don’t tend to take food from feeders. Instead they prefer to hop about on the ground under bird tables or around hedges. They are part of the finch bird family and you may also spot some of their relatives in your garden such as siskins and goldfinches.
4. Blackbirds
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night” – these opening lyrics to The Beatles song Blackbird are certainly accurate in our summer months when the dawn chorus can begin as early as 4am! While male blackbirds live up to their name the females are actually brown and the young juvenile birds can look more like their thrush relatives in their dappled chestnut feathers. Blackbirds tend to be solitary birds so you’re most likely to spot one on its own.
5. Blue tits
Did you know that blue tits congregate together in family groups over winter? This means that if you’re spotting a handful of these blue and yellow birds at your feeder at any one time the food you’re leaving out for them could be supporting more than 20 birds in a family group. Back when many people had milk delivered these clever birds learnt to peck through the foil top to get to the cream underneath from full-fat milk!
What the rankings reveal
The results from everyone’s counting hour are put together every year to provide a snapshot of how our garden birds are doing. Each year there’s some species that climb up the rankings, some that go down and some that hold steady in the same place. A tumble down the rankings from one year to another isn’t necessarily something to be alarmed about – the results feed into the long term data that the survey collects and helps our scientists look at changes in species numbers over several decades. With Big Garden Birdwatch celebrating its 39th year in 2018 there’s plenty of information for them to work from!
The results do often unveil how events outside of Scotland and the UK can impact on the birds people count. Last winter’s berry crop in Scandinavia failed which led to huge numbers of waxwings being seen here. Waxwings are often winter visitors to Scotland but the 2017 results revealed they were here in far greater numbers than other years – around nine times more gardens in Scotland recorded them than in 2016. Such an event is known as an irruption. There were also far more fieldfares and redwings in Scotland in 2017 also due to the sub-zero conditions on the continent.
The 2016 results revelation couldn’t have been more different! The milder weather that winter is thought to have been the reason that many smaller birds such as coal tits and great tits were recorded in higher numbers as more had survived. It was long-tailed tits however who really caught many the eye of many taking part in the survey – over a third of gardens in Scotland were visited by these pompom like birds over the survey weekend.
Looking at Big Garden Birdwatch results over several decades also lets us chart the increase in some birds moving further north within the UK. Nuthatches are traditionally found in Wales and central and southern England but over the last 30 years have been creeping northwards. The first record of them breeding in Scotland was in 1989 and they are now spotted as far north as the Central Belt. Over time we’ve seen them gradually moving up the Birdwatch rankings for Scotland though still some way off the top ten!
Goldfinches have also made their way up the Birdwatch results here. It’s thought that more people leaving our nyjer seeds and sunflower hearts which these gorgeous little birds love might have helped as well as the milder winters we’ve been having. Back in 2004 they were 15th in the Scottish rankings; in 2017 they were into the top 10 at number nine.
Hopefully all this talk of feathered garden visitors has inspired you to take part in Big Garden Birdwatch 2018. It’s all happening 27-29 January – our website has lots of Birdwatch related fun as well as details on how you can take part. Happy counting!