This morning Mr C and I were taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. This annual birdwatch has been taking place now for 30 years here in the UK, and Compost Woman recently wrote about how the event had grown from it's beginnings into being an incredibly important piece of research into British birds and also into a fantastic activity for children wanting to learn more.
I'm not sure if Mr C and I fit into the children category, but I certainly learnt much more about birds by taking part. We don't have a garden, so instead headed down to our local nature reserve where there was a monthly working party taking place this morning. Mr C and I had a new year's party to head off to this afternoon,so we didn't have time to get all muddy and wet working so instead we stayed in the bird hide and spent the hour counting and watching. For me it was the first real opportunity to use the new binoculars that my parents bought us for Christmas and it was fantastic to be able to finally get a close look at all these birds that I normally only saw either from afar or in Mr C's photos.
We even had some interesting visitors along this morning, in addition to the common birds that were listed on the RSPB scoring list. My results are being formally submitted by the reserve manager, but here's the list (the number in brackets signifies the maximum number seen at any one time):
Blackbird (2)
Black-headed gull (7)
Blue tit (4)
Carrion Crow (2)
Chaffinch (2)
Coal tit (1)
Collared dove (1)
Coot (1)
Dunnock (1)
Goldfinch (2)
Great tit (1)
Greenfinch (1)
House sparrow (2)
Jackdaw (24!)
Kingfisher (1)
Little egret (1)
Little grebe (1)
Magpie (2)
Mallard (7)
Moorhen (1)
Robin (1)
Wood pigeon (5)
Leave a Reply