endlessrarities | (no subject)

It's results time.

Here's the tally for the Big Garden Birdwatch 2011:-

Blackbird - 8 (This is a record, and I blame it all on the Fruity Nibbles. I have a raised a generation of handout-dependent Fruity Nibbles addicts who just won't grow up and find themselves a job.)
Robin - 2
Magpie - 1
Chaffinch - 8
Greenfinch - 3
Goldfinch - 4
Blue Tit - 2
Coal Tit - 1
Great Tit - 1
House Sparrow - 1
Collared Dove - 1
Jackdaw - 3
Feral pigeon - 3

For once, the stats reflect the genuine bird population in my garden. Some trends are worth noting. A big decline in greenfinches, while the rest of the finch populations remain stable. [NB: this may be a food issue. The greenfinches preferred husk-free sunflower mix, while the nyger/HFS mix I use now tends to attract goldfinches, which are pretty, but damned antisocial and prone to throwing their weight around]. The siskins didn't visit , which may be an indication of the warmer temperatures today. The blackbirds have increased exponentially, and the tits and smaller songbirds have declined. Wrens have always been infrequent visitors to the garden, but we used to have five dunnocks in residence, and this year they've all gone. Does this reflect a crash in the national dunnock population, or the fact that they've been elbowed out by the blackbirds?

Unfortunately, we ran out of a) apples and b) fat bars just in time for the weekend survey, so the thrush didn't bother turning up, and this may also be a reason why the tits have been so poorly represented. I find that the number of species and the size of the population is closely linked with the range of food available and the weather conditions.

I also can't help wondering if last year's freak absence of birds over the weekend was linked with the appearance of the sparrowhawk. When it hits the garden, the birds tend to vanish for a couple of days afterwards...

Is it just me that has a devil of a time counting finches? Maybe I should subscribe to the tried and tested Japanese method for studying whales. Shoot them all first, count them later. Okay, so you've wiped out a species, but at least your data's correct. AND you get to eat everything afterwards!! {Yes, folks. Don't worry. I'm being facetious...)

Threaded | Flat

I just finally got bird feeders set up, after the cold snap, of course. But I'm certainly enjoying watching the ones who are discovering it. Oddly, I was more knowledgeable about the local birds in Oklahoma so other than cardinals, wrens, blue jays and sparrows, I really don't know some of the visitors. I'm definitely going to have to remedy that lack of knowledge.

And is it horribly puerile of me to have giggled at, "the tits have been so poorly represented"? I guess I was channeling my inner pre-teen boy.

So many birds. I'm envious.

And you got a collared dove!

I'm going to have to go look for images of some of these--I wonder what a coal tit looks like, for example, and I'd like to see a greenfinch. Your goldfinches are much more colorful than American ones, I remember that! And English robins are so very sweet (to look at anyway--I remember the story about how they're less social than... I forget what other bird--maybe tits! Or maybe sparrows...)

That's a lot of different birds! I don't see many in our garden, mostly the European sparrows, gold finches and we have a pair of doves that have started hanging out. And the neighborhood ducks. We do have native silver eyest that visit in the winter. There's a tui and a morepork that live somewhere nearby, I hear them often.

I googled a bunch of the birds that you listed as I am not familiar with the names. Pretty cool and I learned something today!

We struggled to get an accurate count on the finches too, they really ought to organise themselves into neater tighter flocks.

Greenfinches are suffering in most areas at the moment, the issue is unclean feeding stations. There is a mould that develops on peanuts which they are particularly affected by and an entirely different disease passed between the birds when their saliva or droppings accumulate, so a bit of a double whammy really.
Just takes one person in your neighbourhood to cripple your local population, so it might be worth mentioning if you notice grimy feeders next door.

Not a bad turn-out! Mostly what I get round my way is sparrows - they're supposed to be in decline but that's just because they're all living in the tree directly outside my bedroom window, cheeping their little lungs out every morning at dawn (nice to hear when dawn is around waking up time, not so great when it's 3am...)

The only one on that list I would never see is the magpie, they haven't made it as far north as Inverness yet, although I think they're creeping closer.