Big Garden Birdwatch (31/365)

[white_hart]

It's the last weekend in January, which means it's the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. As anyone who's ever tried doing it knows, invariably bird numbers during whatever hour you spend counting will be far lower than they normally are wherever you are, but I still managed to see:

Five goldfinches
Three robins, who spent all the time trying to chase each other off
Two greenfinches
Three great tits
A siskin
Two blackbirds
T, refilling the feeders
A blackcap
A chaffinch
A dunnock
A pale ginger kitten in the garden two doors down
A man in pyjamas, also in the garden two doors down, scattering grass seed
The orange and white cat we often see around
A starling in the tree on the other side of the garage blocks

Of course, ten minutes after I'd finished a bullfinch came and sat in the tree by the fence, and ten minutes after that there were five siskins and about a dozen goldfinches.

Comments

[clanwilliam]

Still, maybe someone else was gleefully noting a bullfinch and five siskins and a dozen goldfinches, when normally all they get is a scraggly pigeon.

[nineveh_uk]

That was me. I know there are goldfinches around, but hardly ever see them. Naturally today having decided not to do it there was a flock in the cherry tree.

[white_hart]

We have been building up our visiting population over the last few years. They are very fond of sunflower hearts!

[white_hart]

I suspect the bullfinch at least came over from the canal, as I see them much more frequently along the towpath than in the garden.

[shewhostaples]

Mine was dismal. I saw one small brown thing that moved too fast to tell what it was and a woodpigeon on the neighbour's chimney stack.

[white_hart]

I swear they always know when you're doing it and hide for that hour!

[antisoppist]

I forgot about it but it's been snowing/sleeting all day and it was foggy yesterday and it would have been impossible to see very much at all. I console myself.

[white_hart]

It has been a miserable weekend weather-wise!

[sfred]

Our blackcap stubbornly refused to visit during the allotted hour.

[white_hart]

I was glad ours did turn up. It's a fairly recent visitor (as are the siskins) but nice to see a wider range of birds.

[sfred]

Yes. Our blackcap is a recent addition to the regulars.

[caulkhead]

I saw a kingfisher and an egret down by the river (stream) yesterday as well as the usual moorhen, coot, mallards, Egyptian and Canada geese, and the ubiquitous parakeets, but only magpies and pigeons in the garden. Even the blackbird didn't want to turn up.

[white_hart]

Fabulous riverside spotting, though! I haven't seen any very interesting water-birds for a while (maybe my walks are too early for them at the moment?), and I don't think the parakeets have made it to Oxford yet.

[callmemadam]

Ha, ha, this happens to me every year, too. It poured with rain most of yesterday but you'd think the birds would still need to eat. I bet today I see a nuthatch and two sorts of woodpecker.