I am not mentioning the weather – I am not mentioning the weather – I am not mentioning the weather.


At least, not until I feel relatively safe to do so!


For the first time in a long while, I managed to go out onto the reserve with my camera, on a lunch break, and record some of the fantastic wildlife within just a few minutes’ walk of the visitor centre. Last week, on Friday 13th of all days, I managed to watch the Kingfisher at the Kingfisher Screen for a good few minutes (unfortunately my camera isn’t powerful enough to get a good photo!) before it flew upstream and away from where I was standing. Walking away I heard (and eventually saw) a Robin singing its heart out at the very top of a tree – I always feel privileged when a Robin allows me to stand nearby and listen to him singing, sometimes for fifteen minutes or more. At Pickup, Long-tailed tits flew just outside and allowed me a good few pictures of them. At home that evening I just had to show people how cute they are and to share my love of them, even if it was expressed in girly squeals of, ‘but look at its face!’.


All this was perfect practice for the Big Garden Birdwatch on 28th and 29th January, for which we’ll be asking as many people as we can to count all of the birds which land in your garden, in a local park, or wherever you can find handy, in order to help the RSPB keep track of how well our birds are doing. There are ten birds we ask you to record, so have a look at our Big Garden Birdwatch website to do your research and find out which birds you need to brush up on – everything you need to know is at www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/. Here at Fairburn Ings, we’ll have staff on hand to talk about garden birds all weekend, and on Sunday 29th we’ll have the Fairburn Ings Advisory Group leading a walk around the reserve to have a look at some of the birds you may see in your garden at home. For more information about the Big Garden Birdwatch here at RSPB Fairburn Ings, have a look at our Events page at: www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/f/fairburnings/events.aspx.


If you’re looking to attract some feathered friends to your garden, we have100g bags of dried mealworms on offer at the moment - six bags are currently £10 (normally they are £4.99 each), and if there are any cats in your area then Catwatches (devices which emit high-pitched sounds only cats can hear) are now £49.99, down from £59.99.


From those of you who took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch in 2011, we found out that there was a 103% increase (since BGBW 2010) in Goldfinches, and a 113% increase in Treecreepers, which is brilliant news for us as the harsh winter of 2010 really had us worried about them! Let’s hope there’ll be some more good news this year, and that we can encourage even more people to take part and take a step for nature.