I find it hard to believe that its a whole week since the Big Garden Birdwatch! Due to a combination of technical issues and the fact that I wasn't in the office for most of last week, I haven't had a chance to tell you all about our Big Garden Birdwatch event! I did "my hour" watching the feeders behind the visitor centre between 10am and 11am on the Saturday morning. Here is what I saw:
Blue tit: 6
Reed bunting: 3
Great tit: 2
Goldfinch: 6
Chaffinch: 4
Greenfinch: 2
Oh, and a male mallard (although I don't think I can count that!)
There were a few notable omissions, though including lesser redpolls (like this one pictured above the goldfinch):
Image credit: Dave Rogers
...And any of the usually ubiquitous great spotted woodpeckers:
Of course, we can't complain too much though, as the above list is still rather impressive though!
Also, as part of the event, we had a very successful bird ringing demonstration by Simon Evans, our resident bird ringer and several helpers. A total of 77 birds were caught and I have attached the full ringing report to this document. If you have never read one before, I will explain the different columns in the table below:
The first column refers to newly ringed birds and the second column refers to birds that have been ringed on the reserve before. The third column refers to birds that have been ringed previously, but elsewhere. This was obviously where all of the redpolls were, as they caught a total of 11 mealy redpolls and nine lesser redpolls. Here is another picture of the latter species, taken in very frosty conditions last year:
The "control" redpolls often throw up some interesting results. In the last couple of months, Simon has even caught two birds that were originally ringed as far away as Norway! It never ceases to amaze me how far some of these birds travel to get here!
If you did the Big Garden Birdwatch in your garden or local green space, you have until 16 February to submit your results. Please do so by following this link. We hope you enjoyed taking part in the survey.