Big Garden Birdwatch Day!

After three months of settling in, we now feel like our new flat is our home-from-home. Apart from the benefit of a second bedroom, and being a two minute walk from Bushy Park (As opposed to the five minute trek we used to make), the new place also benefits from having a slightly more secluded front garden area. One of the first things Rachel did when we moved in was to start hanging bird feeders in a holly bush outside - nothing special, just a couple of seed feeders, some fatballs, a coconut husk fatball, and two bird tables... Actually, for quite a small space, that's a lot of bird food but that's not to worry because we have plenty of takers.

A pair of house sparrows

On a normal day we'll see several species on the feeders. The predominant birds are very definitely the house sparrows who seem to mostly live in the hedge and come chattering from all over to feast on the seed. There seem to be quite a large group and their noisy presence is always a delight. Like many suburban streets we get a proliferation of tits flocking around. Most commonly these will be blue tits and great tits who acrobatically hang from the coconut husk and will often peck at the peanuts, but every so often we get a very special little visitor in the form of a coal tit. I usually associate these charming little birds with visits to Scotland but they crop up all over the place and I've even seen them in central London parks. I've seen long-tailed tits too but usually in the field maples around the estate across the road and I'm not sure if we've coaxed them over to our side of the street yet. Starlings will often come and feed on the fat balls, the greedy things, and we get robins and blackbirds hopping around the bird table. The ekk-ekk-ekking of Moriarty is also a sure sign that either the wood pigeons, collared doves, magpies or ubiquitous parakeets have landed in our field maple tree and on one occasion just after we moved in October I spotted a female blackcap perched daintily in the holly bush.

Happy blue tit on the peanut feeder

Of course late January is the time for that perennial favourite of citizen science, RSPBs Big Garden Birdwatch. This year it's proven popular, probably because sitting in your front room staring at birds for an hour is not only Covid-safe but also very therapeutic and many people have discovered the delights of birdwatching through the campaign that the charity runs every year. I'm a big fan of such citizen science, although there is the temptation to fudge the results, especially if you don't see anything. Last year's count was dismal for me as Moriarty and I stared at an empty tree outside the window for an hour and didn't see as much as a mouldy pigeon. There's a tendency for the hour you choose for this survey to be the hour in which the birds vacate your garden area, but we were lucky enough to count three sparrows, a couple of blue tits, a great tit and a blackbird. I've yet to report - the website seems to have buckled under the strain, but there are a couple of weeks yet to report sightings. Of course those people living out in the countryside have been posting up their finds, everything from linnets to greater spotted woodpeckers, but I won't feel jealous. We've got our own secret little bird haven tucked away in our little corner of London and for that we're extremely grateful!