Hey Blog! As today is the first day of the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch weekend, I thought I’d take part, and share the results from this with you.
The Big Garden Birdwatch is the biggest citizen science survey about nature, with one million participants last year, and is quick, fun, and easy to do. You don’t even need to have a garden, just an hour to do it in, a green space to go to, some paper, an ID sheet (or know the birds already) and your eyes. Upload the results to the RSPB at https://rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/, and also find games, a quiz, bird lists, and many more bird-related activities. Started in 1979 by the RSPB, my Mum has taken part in many Big Garden Birdwatches, including the first one. Oops, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that!
These are the birds I saw while doing the hour of watching, and the totals of their numbers:
| Blackbird | X 2 |
| Blue tit | X 1 |
| Coal tit | X 2 |
| Dunnock | X 1 |
| Robin | X 2 |
| Long-tailed tit | X 9 |
| Wren | X 1 |
Long tailed tits were more in number than all the other birds put together, as they often come in small flocks to our feeder. We watched out of the dining room window, with a pot of tea, and binoculars. We didn’t actually need the binoculars to see the birds, as we have a feeder only a couple of meters away from the window, but it was good to have them, just in case.
Birds are not the only animals we have seen in the garden. The low wall just outside the window, full of holes, is now known as the “mammal wall”, due to the three mice, a bank vole (nicknamed Banksy) and a shrew, (Britain’s smallest carnivore, protected by law) which we think is a Common Shrew, all coming out of the same hole. A grey squirrel comes occasionally, and ate some of the seeds off the head of the old sunflower from the summer. We get toads in summer, and frogs like to hide in the long grass. Our hope is for something really exiting, like a slow worm, or a woodpecker, to come and make our garden its home. This summer we might build a proper pond, which will encourage more wildlife to come to the garden.