Big Garden Birdwatch

We took part this morning spending an hour observing what came and went in our (small) garden.   We cheated just a bit, with my wife filling all our feeders to overflowing with peanuts, grain, niger seed and fat balls.

The RSPB website for submission of results predicts the commonly seen birds.   Sadly none of the 13 species we had took us into the pages to record sightings not on those common garden birds. Our list was:

House sparrow (10)               Dunnock                       Goldfinch (2)                  Robin
Blackbird                               Wood pigeon (2)           Blue tit (2)                      Jackdaw
Collared dove                         Starling                         Greenfinch

Actually I might have left off a couple of these in our submission.   The Greenfinch was the first we have seen for quite some time; we used to see lots but some years ago a virus seemed to decimate their numbers, and they do not seem to have recovered.

The species count used to be more varied but over the years lots of trees have gone, nothing dramatic but ones and twos chopped down here and there each year, and we can now see woodland half a mile away, whereas 20 years ago we could only see the roofs of nearby houses.   The reasons are plentiful, take your pick from inter alia:  they interfere with light /  they interfere with TV reception / they might be dangerous.  In reality we don't like trees, this in a village which parades its low carbon credentials enthusiastically!

We usually have at least one Coal tit in the garden every day, but not today.   Nor did we see the Great spotted woodpecker which has made a couple of appearances in the last month, causing excitement on each occasion/.