Anything For Animals

posted by admin on Jan 31

This weekend saw the annual garden bird count get underway - and I had great fun!

I chose to help with 3 counts, as I love watching the birds - and I like to practice my identification skills!  I did my garden, which is a large lawn an orchard next to a wildlife reserve in a small village, my niece’s garden which is a huge lawned garden in suburbia, and finally my friends tiny town garden that she uses to grow vegetables in.

And surprisingly, she got the most species visiting her garden!

I couldn’t believe the numbers and the types of birds she got hopping around her garden and surrounding hedges - and I only watched out the window for and hour!  She had wrens, pied wagtails, song thrushes, starlings and house sparrows, along with blackbirds, robins, crows, collared doves, wood pigeons, magpies, blue tits and seagulls!

My countryside garden did get a great spotted woodpecker, but everything else was the expected species.  Bit unfortunate really as we have seen redwings, bullfinches, partridges, long-tailed tits and even red kites in the garden over the past few weeks - yet for the survey, they all stayed away!

My nieces garden got some standard fare, but nothing that wasn’t seen in the other 2 gardens.  However, the added bonus of doing this garden was that I was able to teach her some of the names of the species we saw!  She was very interested in the count for the whole hour, and came away knowing blackbirds, magpies and wood pigeons (and that caterpillars turn into butterflies!).  Not bad for a 3 year old!

What Else Can You Do?

This survey is only done in January every year, but there are other surveys and birds counts you can get involved in throughout the year in the UK with the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) and the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) by just learning to identify the most common species native to this country.

There are no doubt surveys across other countries by their national bird-loving charities and organisations, and by joining them (usually for a few £’s or $’s a month) you may well get some books or booklets on local birds and how to identify native and migrating species.

This way - even if you don’t stand outside and count birds every year, you are helping others to do just that.  You will be funding research into common and endangered species in your country and around the world.

Now that can’t be a bad thing!