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RSPB Birdwatch

(18 Posts)
merlotgran Sun 25-Jan-15 12:34:43

Anyone doing this?

It's a bit boring in our garden this morning. Only a few blue tits, great tits and one robin so far.

glammanana Sun 25-Jan-15 12:56:25

I found that we don't have as many as last year,I found my lists from last year to compare and there is quite a difference.
Watching the blue tits having a bath in the water on top of the garage makes for a pleasent few minutes I have seen two Robins one was very red breasted they are my favourite they come back every year,hopefully some more as the afternoon goes on.

ninathenana Sun 25-Jan-15 14:33:28

We did ours from 1-2 pm. When I entered the results on-line it said "are you sure you saw 25 sparrows" yes we did !
They say they're on the decline but there's always a large flock in our area.
Blackbird, blue tit, robin, collared doves, starlings too.

Maggiemaybe Sun 25-Jan-15 15:18:48

My DH has just sent in his results - one robin! He's crushed. Some of our local gardeners are repairing a fence behind the garden, and I think they've scared our feathered friends off.

durhamjen Sun 25-Jan-15 15:55:55

I did it yesterday morning and had one robin, two sparrows, two blackbirds and a woodpigeon, along with two magpies being very noisy on the roof. I had to go out the front door to see if it was one or two.

I thought that was quite appalling considering how mild it was, so I did it again for an hour this morning and had the robin, the woodpigeon and the blackbirds.
Normally there are coaltits, bluetits, greattits, chaffinches and goldfinches.
I went for a walk along the cycletrack and noticed a bullfinch on a hawthorn bush. Shame it wasn't in my garden.

I think they know when it's birdwatch weekend, and decide to desert gardens for the countryside.

durhamjen Sun 25-Jan-15 15:57:22

That's another thing, nina. Normally there are loads of sparrows in my garden. Just two this year, but lots laughing at me when I went for a walk!

jennycockerspaniel Sun 25-Jan-15 18:34:01

I had blue tits 5, great tits 2, dunnock 1pigeon 1 robins 2 and5 blackbirds 5 blackbirds unfortunately my long tall tits don’t come till late tea t time

apricot Sun 25-Jan-15 18:59:45

I rarely get anything interesting in my wildlife-friendly garden. I did see one blackcap today.
I can't identify one small brown bird among all the other small brown birds and am never sure if it's a dunnock or a house sparrow.
No herons or sparrow hawks today, beastly things which I hate.

vampirequeen Sun 25-Jan-15 20:54:42

I regularly get visited by a lovely little flock of sparrows. I love watching them argue and bicker.

numberplease Sun 25-Jan-15 21:09:15

I used to do the birdwatch, but these days we rarely see birds in our back yard, sad in a way, but also a good thing with a cat living here.

glammanana Mon 26-Jan-15 12:04:26

As expected plenty of birds about this morning they must have all been keeping out of the rain over the past two days.

Tegan Mon 26-Jan-15 12:08:21

There's a bird outside that's driving me bonkers; it tweets about 8 times then does a sort of gargle for a couple of seconds. Oh; it's just stopped confused. It's been doing it for about an hour.

Greyduster Mon 26-Jan-15 12:25:55

I haven't done bird watch this year. My garden birds are fickle and uninspiring these days. Since we moved here three years ago, we seem to get very few birds in this garden. Quite a few sparrows and some blackbirds but little else. We moved the feeders into the lower garden in the Autumn and now even the sparrows have deserted us - clearly, if you don't put the food under their noses they can't be a***d to come and look for it. We have just a robin, a dunnock and a few collared doves. When I think back to the dozen different species of birds we used to get in our previous garden I could cry.

durhamjen Mon 26-Jan-15 14:39:25

Just looked at your pictures, number, and we used to live in a house with a yard like that. We had ivy growing up the house wall, so we used to have sparrows nesting there. I once counted a couple of dozen for the birdwatch.

chocolatepudding Mon 26-Jan-15 14:45:44

I have just seen a kingfisher perched on an old apple tree on the riverbank in my back garden I usually just see a flash of brilliant turquoise and orange before it disappears flying along the river!

granjura Mon 26-Jan-15 14:59:26

You lucky so and so- yes, seen the flash of green 100s of time- but never ever one sitting there 'posing' for me to admire.

loopylou Mon 26-Jan-15 15:41:08

I've been pretty lucky with birds here, we back on to woods which helps. Plenty of Blue- , Great-, and long-tailed tits, robins (usually warring males), great spotted woodpecker, blackbird, wren, dunnocks and buzzards overhead.
Don't see nuthatch much nor thrushes, sadly.

granjura Mon 26-Jan-15 16:08:05

Apart from the long-tailed tits we so loved in our UK garden- we have every other kind possible here, including the occasional crested tit. We also get black caps, and in French they are called black tits- and guess what, I googled them (doh) - it was a bit of a shock, lol. Just shows how children can accidentally google innocent things and come up with something, hmmm, totally different and un-expected.

Snowing heavily and bramblings and chaffinches feeding on sunflower seeds now. In French, bramblings are called winter chaffinches - and they are very similar but with more black and white on them.