Big Garden Birdwatch

Every Year for the last 30 years, the RSPB has been running the Big Garden Birdwatch in January. It is a time when volunteer bird watchers across the British Isles count the birds in their Garden / workplace for 1 hour on the same day. The details can be found here

Rosie and I did this last year with varying success and we continues the survey this year. It is unusually quiet in the garden today, with many of the local birds staying away. I suspect that everyone has charged up their bird feeders and the local community is roosting quietly to one side, out of the gaze of the bird watchers and us.

This year our count was 4 blackbirds; 3 house sparrows; 2 wood pigeons; 1 magpie; 1 collared dove and 1 coal tit.

The 17 starlings 6 pigeons, 1 crow and 3 magpies roosting on the trees just outside our garden do not count and the mass of coal tits, blue tits, great tits, robins and the odd goldcrest that often visit our feeders were not here today. I did not even see a squirrel!

Better luck next year - It's the participation that counts.