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Sunday, 26 January 2020

Big Garden Birdwatch 2020

The mild weather of the last few weeks has seen a reduction in the number of birds coming to the feeders in our garden, so I wasn't expecting to see many for this year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. In fact though, there were forty-three birds and nine species, not as many as last year when it was colder, but far more than the sixteen birds and seven species of 2017. Maybe the change in the weather - it's a touch colder today with a dusting of snow on the hills and it's forecast to turn really wintry - has brought the birds out.

As usual there were far more chaffinches than anything else and counting them was difficult as they arrived in large flocks. I reckoned there were at least twenty at any one time. All the species were ones we see every day. Those we see often but not every week - long-tailed tits, goldfinches, siskins - didn't appear. Even so, doing the birdwatch was enjoyable, as it is every year. An hour spent watching birds is never wasted.



Here's what I saw this year:

Chaffinch               20
Blue Tit                   4
Coal Tit                   4
Greenfinch              4
Great Tit                 3
Dunnock                2
Robin                     2
Blackbird                2
Great Spotted Woodpecker    2

3 comments:

  1. Alex Roddie27 January 2020 at 17:52

    Gosh, that's a lot of chaffinches! Here are my observations (from 14.15-15.15 Saturday):

    Wood pigeon, 2
    Robin, 2
    Blackbird, 2
    Blue tit, 2
    Great tit, 1

    Later in the day I saw a big flock of long-tailed tits, a dunnock, the wren (there only ever seems to be one), and a couple of chaffinches. Plus the usual wood pigeons, magpies and jackdaws, of course.

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    Replies
    1. Chris Townsend28 January 2020 at 21:17

      There are masses of chaffinches every day. Twenty is quite low! We occasionally have wood pigeons, jays and jackdaws - maybe once a month for each.

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  2. Birdman29 January 2020 at 15:03

    I had a disappointing count this year with only 7 species, my worst year ever:

    Blue tit: 2
    Great tit: 2
    Robin: 1
    Wood pigeon: 4
    Jackdaw: 5
    Magpie: 5
    Green woodpecker: 1

    Disappointing, because last year I counted 13 species. My top year was 16 species in 2016. This is in my (communal) garden in the deep south of England in the middle of a quite large city, but near a beautiful big park, which helps a lot.

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