Don't forget the RSPB Big Birdwatch

Thanks for reminding us about this.
I'll try to come back and make a longer comment another time. Thank you. :o)

I second that,been doing it for a few years now so will pass on info to friends and family,

Wow! Thanks for this Blog Rbfleurs i didnt know they did this il sure put the date on my calender & have ago myself :)

Thank you for letting us know, I love birds as much as I love my garden! Will be counting. Does pheasants count?
I see a few of them here this time of year.

Iv just visted the Site uv mentioned Rbfleurs & Registered :)

Thanks for the blog, but i also have been doing it for a few years now.

Hi Jacque....Jane here.We did the garden watch last year and it was great fun.You will enjoy...esp as you have so many visiting your garden now !

Sounds fab Jane cant wait 2 do it :)The Paper u fill out do u post it off as i dont have a Faxer :/

Thanks for this information RBFleurs, I didnt realise this existed. I've registered like Jacque. Do you get feedback afterwards Jane when the results are in?

Yes jacque you can post it Last year we had a small flock of siskins visit and stayed for a couple of months...little finches from Scandinavia....not around this year though.

Hi Dawn...you can go to the webpage to find out all info.Are you still getting lots of visitors and are they stilll eating you out of house and home?

Yes Jane, lots of birds today, the blackbirds love the sultanas - you said they would :-) I'll go back to the website when I get chance as they give lots of information on how to attract wildlife (Jacque: you'd like that). We had a thrush today and the top of its chest was yellow coloured but the books don't show this.

We put up another bird feeder in our willow tree at the weekend and it is very popular.

We have two red breasted robins in our garden only feet apart from each other, quite often. I thought they were very specific of there own areas. As they are supposed to fight to the death as they are very territorial.

Or is this only during the breeding season?

I have two red-breasted robins feeding near each other in my garden, and several other GoY members also have two or more robins. One mentioned seeing six in her garden all at once ! Robins do compete more at certain times of year.

Hi T&T, BonkersB referred to robins a while back and it's the male robins that are fiercely territorial, BB says if you see 2 together they will be a pair or 2 females - isn't that right Jane/jacque?

Think Jane best 2 ask on this 1 Dawn iv learnt most about Birds from Jane&Ray :)Theyv great Knowlegde on Wildlife making an Great Asset For us Learners on GOY:)

Yes males will even fight to the death this time of year when establishing territory before breeding season spot on Dawn either females looking for mates or a pair.Jacque,your too kind think we all learn from one another. After all non of us experts...we all just share our love for them

Wow, it's great to see the response to this!

*Jacque I think you can fill in the form online, now you;ve registered. There is a form you can type the numbers in then email it. They may even email you a form now that you have registered - I can't quite remember but I'll let you know as soon as I check mine.

If you're interested any more information about wildlife in the garden, they also have a Homes For Wildlife guide, where you can follow the tips for attracting specific wildlife to your garden, including beneficial insects. The advice is great for any size garden and for any amount of experience, and if you sign up the newsletter you get small monthly reminders about what you could be doing and info about the RSPB and wildlife in general. You'd also get the results from the survey once they're in.
It'll be good to blog about which birds we see too!

Iv already filled out the Wildlife Guild 2 RBfleur & got some great feed back on it :) Thanx again 4 this Blog :)

Agree will be good to compare all our findings here after the event.....Thanks Rbf

I've been a good girl too and completed the Home For Wildlife Guide - there is lots of good advice, isnt there. Thanks so much for drawing this to our attention.

Hi Rbf,how did your count go ? Did ours between 11 and 12 today.Its usually the second big "flush of the day.Had a visiting flock of about 30 starlings...should have seen us trying to count them...some in the pond,others in front of the window...others on the fat feeders.!
No long tailed tits,but our population of goldfinches has grown from 3 last year to a "charm" of 16 !

Hi Everyone, like BB, just wondering how you got on. We did ours between 2pm and 3pm, We had the usual birds visiting, but the wood pecker didint appear, or the gold finches but your loss was our gain BB, we had a little flock of long tailed tits appear, enjoying all the different feeders - there were 10 of them!

Oh Dawn..thats lovely ! They make a sweet twittering sound dont they.We started off with 3 goldfinches,but more came as we bought two more niger feeders last year.They also bred,and the babies are now getting the red faces !

The gold finches are gorgeous too. It must have been amazing for you to see 16 of them. I love how they, like the long tailed tits, fly together! and they chatter away in harmony, super.

Like you Dawn our woodpecker did not turn up,and no sign of any thrushes,but cant have it all can we ?lol.At one point had thirteen chaffinches down...didnt stay still long enough to count them.But the best of all was counting 19 house sparrows in one go...since theyre in decline it is great to see so many.Hope they use our "flats "

That's brilliant that you had so many sparrows - has Irish been sending them over, lol. I didnt see the thrush either or any starlings, mostly we saw tits and a couple of robins where fighting for most of the hour, ha ha. I can see your sparrow flats being rented very soon :-)

Bet it was Irish lol......hope they do use the flats..would be good to keep on increasing the population !

Hi All :) See uv all had good count ups ! I did my count 1030/1130am & i saw no Thrushes Or Chafffinch 2day! 8 Feral Pigeons & 4 Collarded Doves were peeking @ Fallen Seed from Apple Tree Feeders ,i Counted 11 Starlings & 6 Blackbirds along with 1 Blue Tit & 1 Robin My Woodpecker was`nt around Either :(

Yep it would, then you can send me some of the little fellas! I still can't believe how they've declined in no.s, so sad, they used to be everywhere!

Hi Jacque, I think the woodpeckers must have had the day out together cos BB and I never saw any either :-) or thrushes! I saw 4 greenfinches though which was nice!

Hi Jacue...NO woodpeckersfor any of us ! Must have gone for a cider or two lol.Did you see your little chaffinch ?
Dawn we saw 2 greenfinches...numbers dropped from last year : (

Ha, Ha, Woodpecker Cider, very funny. Shame you didnt see many greenfinches BB, there will probably be loads tomorrow!

Little Finch didnt show BB :( It was raining hard here when i did my count! Do u think that made a Difference ?

Our birds seem to stay away when it rains Jacque, poor you, bad timing, was dull here but it didnt rain :-(

Yes Jacque...we get less when it rains...it had dried up here by 10 so in they came.Yesterday had hard frost in morning and ther were even more.Thought about doing 2 counts and picking the best LOL

Seems the Bigger Birds dont mind the Rain so Much Dawn?

Right Jacque, I must have been a little bird in a previous life as I dont like the rain either, lol. That's a point BB, if it had been a hard frosty morning there would have been lots more, never mind.

Its was nicer here yesterday BB/Dawn & there seemed more Birds which i feel quite sad about as id of loved them all2 have been here this Morning4 the count :/

Shame, isn't it. Our garden has been a bit disrupted with building work and I couldnt see the bird feeders from the house as we have a HUGE pile of clay on the lawn (very nice!!) so we took a coffee and sat in the car so we had a good view - binoculars at the ready, lol.

Dont be sad Jacque.....your feathered friends will all be back tomorrow.They dont care about the count as long as their FOOD is out as usual lol !!

Jacque, BB tells me that the BTO do another survey later in the year ..... Over to you BB!

LOL that made me Lol Dawn over to u X lol

Ha ha .....

Theres various surveys they do...if interested Jacque google British trust for Ornithology for info !

Dawn....Irish wants to know about the book,back on photo...youcan tell her as you got it cheaper than us !!!

Yep, done it BB.

Well done Dawn !!

;-)

Book What Book? il go have a peek :)

You would love it Jacque!

Oh Jacque...you will love it Its called garden Birds and Wildlife...just out in Dec...got a cop[y for Christmas..its brilliant.Was about to find you to tell you about it.Am over on Irishs pic called BB !

OMG iv been looking for a Gardening Book on Wildlife Gardens ect2day ? How Spooky is that? :)

Dawn got hers from Amazon for£8...we paid full retail price of £20...oh Jacque you will love it.Its called Garden Birds and Wildlife...we dip into it all the time.Let us know how you get on xx

Weird!!! If you find the book on Amazon, you can click on the link "look inside book" and you can see a few pages to give you a feel of how good it is.

Sounds great im a member of Amazoon ;) xx

I think its well worth the £8.00 Jacque :-)

:) Thanx Dawn il give it alook 2 morw :) we do find some great things out on here dont we ? lol

We do Jacque, there's nothing quite like "Word Of Mouth", lol.

lol Or Ear of Ear ;) lol

You're right ....

Your both right lol

Hiya BB, and everyone. Wow BB that's an amazing number of goldfinches and sparrows! I'm lucky to have a gang of 5 sparrows who tend to lurk in the background and leap out for food when the others aren't looking.
I only just had the time to get on here to see how everyone did. Looks like we've all had a good weekend watching the birds.
I had an interesting time as a random pigeon appeared then kept reappearing with more and more until there were about 8 fighting over the birdtable and food on the ground! I know they're birds but I really don't like pigeons on the garden, they are so greedy. the poor little birdies didn't get a look in, so I spent odd moments this weekend chasing them off! I managed to do my 'official' bridcount at about 3 this afternoon with no pigeons but I didn;t have as many littleuns as I usually do.
I did however see a nice range including blackbirds, chaffinches, robins, blue tits, great tits, long tailed tits, dunnocks, sparrows, a magpie, a wren and a song thrush... and of course, the squirrel!
I'll post some pictures up as soon as I get them sorted too :-)

I did mine from 9.30 - 10.30 yesterday - my long tailed tits didn't appear - WHY NOT? But I did have two coal tits and two goldfinches as well as a chaffinch, a robin, starlings, bluetits, house sparrows, rooks, woodpigeons, dunnocks, blackbirds, great tits - I think that's all. The green woodpeckers didn't appear either, :-(

I must check out this book! Sounds good.

Don't be sad, Jacque, you did much better than me. Very heavy rain throughout Saturday and Sunday, gardens swamp-like. I had decided I would do the birdwatch early on Sunday morning but couldn't even see out of my window the rain was driving so hard. Decided to leave it until the afternoon as my fish tank had developed a light/heating problem and needed sorting out anyway. That done, I tried again in the afternoon but zilch, zero, nothing!!
All the food I had put out was still there this morning but not for long - they all came back in a rush. I'd love to know where they were all hiding yesterday and whether any of them were counted?

~I suppose because so many took part that they will be able to get a good idea~however if as you say it was driving rain or people who never feed birds suddenly put out tons of food it will tend to distort the figures.
However today my husband took the dogs out along the river bank at Ilston and saw a kingfisher~although he had his camera he was not fast enough to get a photo~makes up for the fact that we didn't have as many birds as usual yesterday even if it doesn't count!He couldn't wait to get back to tell me how gorgeous it was!

Poor U Gee it did rain alot didnt it &my gardens the Same SWAMP LIKE 2 walk on :( The King Fisher sounds a Beautiful Site Arlene :)You had Lots of Different Birds Spritz ! Well Done You x

Both daughter and I did our birdcount her Sat mine yesterday,she had better weather and pleased to say was up on last years quota,like a lot of members my little birds stayed away for whatever reason( Imps are back today which is typical) but was pleased with my own results. Well done everybody.