Big Garden Birdwatch - 2020

It appears that normal service has been resumed for the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. The feeders are topped up, I've prepared my recording sheet, binoculars are to hand and the birds have vanished like snow in summer.  I can only suppose that the damp, mildish weather has allowed the birds to feed up in the countryside and they don't need to visit our gardens so much.

Female Blackbird with grapes.

Finally, I managed to entice our first visitor, a male Blackbird, with some grapes.  Naturally, he hid behind a garden ornament to eat them so here is a photo of the missus.  A little later, a Carrion Crow perched in our Oak.

Robin - one of a pair

I was charmed to see a pair of Robins dancing in and out of the twigs of our Acer and Buddleia trees. This pair have been around for a while now, and I hope they will nest somewhere nearby.

Blue Tit on Winter Sweet

My favourites were the three Blue Tits searching for insects amongst our yellow Winter Sweet and Witchhazel flowers.  A pair have already been checking out our old nest box - maybe they will decide it's still good enough to use.

Male House Sparrow on Crab Apple tree.

The RSPB results (at the time of writing - evening of 26 Jan) shows that the House Sparrow is the most widely spotted bird. I only got one male, which perched briefly in our wonky crab apple tree. My most common bird, with six individuals, was Woodpigeon.

We usually get about eight or nine Starlings fighting over the food on the bird table but only two appeared during my bird count, along with one rather nervous Magpie.

Here is my results list.

Results for 2020

This graph shows the ups and downs of my bird watches since 2011.  This year I got fewer birds (18 from 8 species) than last year (35 from 12).

This year's results were a little below average.