I expect the figures from this year’s RSPB garden birdwatch will be a bit different from those of recent years: with much of the country covered in snow on Saturday, birds would have been very visible in people’s gardens as they searched for food.
I’m glad we did our bird watch on Saturday – the rain that night washed away all trace of the snow, so that by Sunday colour had returned to the garden and many of the birds had departed. (Also departed were the two snowmen on our neighbours’ lawn – but they left evidence of their existence in the form of two carrots on the grass.)
In our allotted hour this year we saw:
- 11 blackbirds
- 6 starlings
- 3 chaffinches
- 5 goldfinches
- 2 fieldfares
- 2 dunnocks
- 2 blue tits
- 1 greenfinch
- 1 great tit
There was also a robin two gardens over, but he stubbornly refused to come to our garden and so couldn’t be counted.
If we’d done our bird watch the weekend before, it would have been a very different picture, as we would have struggled to accurately count the vast numbers of birds that were here. But it’s still a pretty good showing.
This picture shows a greenfinch visiting our garden about a week ago, when the snow covered every surface.
We had planned to do it and then it rained on and off both days and every time we thought we’d do it we sat around for 10 minutes and saw nothing. I’m more than a bit disappointed as we usually have so many birds in our little garden. You have a great list – well done! x
Oh, what a shame that the weather spoiled it for you. They do another wildlife count in the summer, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you get better weather then.