My Big Garden Birdwatch

24-25 January 2015, is the RSPB’s Great Garden Birdwatch. Thousands of people all over the country will take part by recording the birds they see in their garden for an hour.

It is the 36th year the event has been running and apart from being great fun (and a good excuse for a coffee and biscuit) the results offer valuable information about how birds are doing. Because of the Birdwatch, conservationists know that species like the sparrow are in decline and species like the blue tit are on the up! With this information measures can be taken to improve numbers of declining species.

This is the first year I’ve taken part. I did my Birdwatch from Hartlebury in Worcestershire, neither my home county, Hertfordshire or my University home in Exeter. Hartlebury is my boyfriend’s local patch and I was there for the weekend.

My Birdwatch patch.

I put out some bread and seeds to encourage the West Midland birds to the garden and then I sat back with a cup of coffee and waited. It wasn’t long before a rather confident little robin flew down.

Over the whole hour I saw a couple of blackbirds, a gang of four house sparrows, two blue tits, two robins, a wood pigeon, a carrion crow, one magpie (unlucky) and amazingly a pied wagtail. I have never seen a pied wagtail in a garden setting before! It was as if it was saluting my participation in the Great Garden Birdwatch. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture as it came and went in a flash but I did do a little victory dance and made sure to tell everyone in the house how cool it was.

I’m glad I saw some house sparrows as we don’t get any of them in my Hertfordshire home.

Spot the sparrow!

The blue tits were adorable as always, flitting and dancing from branch to branch.

So sweet!

The two robins were quite comfortable together, their territorial instinct yet to kick in. The robin was always king of the bird table, when he was on it no other bird came near and if they dared he would chase them off. The little bully.

The happy couple.

The highlight had to be the pied wagtail. I am becoming more and more convinced that they are indeed my spirit guides. It was overall a lovely way to spend an hour. I saw more of the birds’ behaviour than I normally would and I was able to pick up on the characters of the individual birds . It was fun doing it in a garden I wasn’t used to as I had no idea what species to expect! I wonder what the overall results will reveal.