It’s that time of the year when the RSPB have their own science experiment that involves us, the general public.

Sit for an hour in your garden or green space and write down the type of birds you see and the number of that particular bird you encounter. Good for keeping the children occupied.

You can get more information on their website and the results can be sent through to them too.

Have fun.

👍😊

There was a live craft lesson for kids to make a bird feeder station on there too today. Might still be there.
It’s another nice thing for them to do in lockdown, getting involved.

The Beamlets and I are on board with this.

Always a cue for our regular visitors to hide away for whatever hour we decide to watch!

Well we have seen Goldcrests and Long tailed tit’s for the first time this last week – possibly moving in as the next door but one neighbours have taken out all their hedge and trees in the last month 🙁

I’m up for that. 🙂

The snow seems to to have pushed the birds on to my table/feeders after 4 months of nothing just on time for this.

We’ll be doing this too. Like lots of other burnt out bods I’ve bailed out of finace in the pandemec to do something different and have joined a startup that’s building ‘Strava for Birdwatching’: https://chirpbirding.com/ Hiring too as it happens 😀 https://chirp.slite.com/api/s/note/LThvY87ZbzAe8wetcBkpGx/Senior-Software-Engineer-React-Native

I’m hoping this unlike the last 3 years the weather is kind. Torrential rain doesn’t really bring much to us.

Recently we’ve had a few new faces making regular visits and it would be nice to include them. We now have a family of long tail tits making daily appearances for almost a month and a coal tit. Must have made a positive impact with the feed change.

3rd year for Mrs Crank and me, got our flasks and waterproofs at the ready! We get quite a few varieties of tits (fnarr fnarr) and a fair few other little ‘uns so hoping for another relaxing hour this year!

@dakuan you might want to get your cto to have a look at your site on something other than an iphone, doesn’t look great on and Android tablet

thanks! CTO is me 🙂 Yeah there’s lots of issues with the current product. It’s an off the shelf product that’s been extended by an offshore team. We’ll be rebuilding almost all of it with a new team (that ill be hiring) in the next few motnhs

oh there is actually an app for it too, it’s much friendlier than the website generally

doesn’t look great on and Android tablet

Fine on my android phone tho (opera), and I’ll bet 50p it works on Drac’s ipad

matt_outandabout – that’s truly sad.

Yesterday a large crane arrived and took down several mature trees from the canal bank very near out house. I understand that the roots may have been affecting the high canal bank, but I felt very emotional. A lot of those trees were covered in ivy. So much creature habitat destroyed in a few hours.

Our bird count has been very good in the last few weeks due to the snow, ice and low temperatures, we had redpoll in the garden for the first time, but they’ve gone now.

Very slow hour here today. 3 Blue Tits, 2 Great Tits and 1 Robin.

That was the lot.

All in the first half an hour as well.

We’ve had a pair of blackcaps arrive in the garden just in time for this, hopefully they’ll be out tomorrow. Plenty of the usual sparrows, robins, starlings, blackbirds and a few types of tits too.

Our garden has been a windy harbour and scared all the birds off. Added to this on Friday a sparrowhawk sat on the pergola (next to one bird feeder) for 15 minutes,
Sparrow hawk came back yesterday and hardly a bird to be seen.

Will try again this afternoon.

Sparrowhawk!!!

Wow! We only get sparrows, occasional starlings and blackbirds

1 parakeet so far.

Cleaned and refilled the feeders this morning, 10 mins to go

The count so far

robin 2*
goldfinch
wood pigeon
sparrow 7
crow
blackbird 2*
great tit 2
greenfinch 2

*I haven’t seen two blackbirds or two robins in the garden at the same time, but they are def different birds (1 female blackbird & 1 male and 1 skinny robin and 1 fat robin) but think technically I’m only meant to count as 1.

Only slightly unusual thing is the one goldfinch, we normally see 4 or 5 or none, not one on its own.

Fairly standard count for us:

Great tit
Blue tit
Coal tit
Pidgeon
Collared Dove
Crow
Magpie
Starling
Dunnock
Bullfinch

MIA were chaffinch, robin, wren, goldfinch and long tailed tit, all of which are very frequent visitors. Treecreeper, nuthatch, siskin and great spotted woodpecker would have been nice possibles. It is still -2 degrees here though, so maybe they have more sense.

Mrs OTS is doing this – it’s looking like a good haul. Even a new species for the list – Pheasant.
Hilights today include long tailed tits, gold crest and the usual woodpeckers.
Just waiting for the bull finches to put in an appearance.

Just done our count, after shooing away a large black cat we saw Starlings, crows, pigeons, great tits, blackbirds, dunnocks, wren, magpie, goldfinches and a redwing.

The robins and blue tits that were seen earlier decided to go back to bed, or at least go somewhere without a neighborhood cat.

Kept one of the kids entertained for an hour too so we’ll count that as a win.

Cheers for the reminder OP 😊

Usual array of finches and tits, but also male+female blackcaps and this fella:

Poor show – male and female blackbirss, couple of doves, one each of magpie, sparrow, robin, pigeon and a possible dunnock. Looking forward to next year! 🙂

I will never not be amused by blackbirds chasing each other round. 🙂

Despite my earlier scepticism we had the regulars plus a large mixed group of goldfinch and siskin, with the siskin visiting the nyjer feeder too. We’ve not seen siskin for ages and the nyjer was barely getting looked at, so that’s a bit special just for the rspb.

I live very near Bungalow Central, where every house has a bird table and feeders so we get quite a few of the back garden regulars coming and going to see whos put things out.

Blue Tit
Great Tit
Coal Tit
Dunnock
Siskin
Goldfinch
Greenfinch
Chaffinch
Blackbird
Wood Pigeon
Feral Pigeon
Redwing
Fieldfare
Red Kite
Black-headed gull

But i’d swap them all for that Sparrow Hawk!

During the same hour today all of the regulars were back! Wren, Blackbirds, Pigeons, Dunnock.

Oooh some nice birds seen above.

Well the sparrow hawk was back. A full 15 minutes before anything flew in.
Count:
Chaffinch
woodpigeon
sparrow hawk
robin
greenfinch
goldfinch
dunnock
blackbird

Missing from usual visits:
bullfinch
longtail tits
blue ”
great ”
coal ”
wren
starling
black cap

We have a sparrow hawk that patrols the garden. It’s developed a gruesome technique that involves spooking the birds so that they fly into the windows of the sun room. They drop, stunned and then it swoops down to finish them off.

This shows the imprint a pigeon made on our window that was being pursued the said sparrow hawk

And the sparrow hawk in action

Didn’t have much chance yesterday, and today I went to check the feeders, and found the incessant wet weather had made some of the feeders go manky, so cleared them out and refilled them, then as I was already out in the snow and wet, I felt it necessary to clear up the unspeakable mess the birds had left under the tree the feeders hang in, so cue ages with a shovel, brush and hose, trying not to get my eyes poked out by my Acer tree. By the time I finished that and sorted out the hedgehogs feeding station it was getting dark.
I could hear goldfinches twittering away, so they were around and we’ve had a little group of long tailed tits, starlings, sparrows, wood pigeons and various other tits as well over the weekend and generally. For some considerable time we also get goldcrests, but it’s impossible to predict when they’ll turn up, and they’re so well camouflaged, apart from the yellow head flash, that spotting them is really difficult.
There’s also a red kite that’s been turning up regularly, flying very low over the houses and gardens on the opposite side of the road, and over my side as well, but it’s hardly a garden bird!

Love the sparrowhawk story above. Saw on Twitter someone’s bird watch tally:

Blue tit.
Sparrowhawk.
The end.

Also note a few pheasants mentioned above. We’ve got tonnes here*. I’m interested to see the survey numbers on this one. I suspect the usual amount of the useless (admittedly beautiful) birds were released but the usual number of, erm, shooters were not released this year due to lockdown.

We enjoyed our hour, was an exciting 55 mins staring at an empty garden then a frantic five minutes with our expected guests including the pair of great spotted and my favourite long tailed tit platoon.

* fun fact: the biomass of pheasants reared and released for shooting in Britain exceeds 1.5x the natural avian biomass. https://www.whatthesciencesays.org/estimating-the-number-and-biomass-of-pheasants-in-britain/

These things. A seemingly infinite amount of them. And nothing else, not another bird dares enter.