The birds that make their home in Binfield are welcoming the first signs of spring. As I write this: blackbirds, robins, and thrushes are trying out song-posts and establishing their territories; dunnocks (or hedge sparrows) are visible and audible; and woodpeckers are drumming in our copses.
At the end of January lots of Binfield residents took part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch. This required us to take an hour to count the birds that turned up in our garden and then submit this information to the RSPB. Almost half a million people took part in this activity in 2020 and this annual event is providing important information on the population trends amongst our garden visitors.
This year, Binfield participants reported greater spotted woodpeckers (as shown in the picture), sparrowhawks, nuthatches and blackcaps during their hours. The average number of species reported in a Binfield garden is somewhere between 12 and 15. I am not aware that anyone reported a flamingo this year. A few years ago, the data for our postcode included a single record of a flamingo which turned out to be a sighting of a plastic flamingo in a neighbour’s garden.
Early results for 2021 suggest that significantly more people than ever have taken part. In fact so many people tried to submit their results on Sunday 31st January that the RSPB systems struggled to cope. Live events ran on social media showing people how to identify and feed their garden birds. Live feeds from cameras watching bird feeders at RSPB reserves and elsewhere attracted lots of interest. People joined in from all over the world comparing the visitors to bird tables in places from North America to Scandinavia.
The RSPB now has over 40 years of data and this has helped increase their understanding of the challenges faced by wildlife. Big Garden Bird Watch was one of the first surveys to identify the decline of song thrushes in gardens. This species was a firm fixture in the top 10 in 1979. But by 2019, those numbers had declined by 76% – coming in at number 20. House sparrow sightings have dropped by 53% since the first Bird Watch in 1979, but in the past 10 years their numbers have grown by 10%. Citizen science, like Big Garden Bird Watch, is a way of helping spot problems, and is the first step towards putting things right.
I think the Big Garden Bird Watch, and other surveys like it, are great fun too. In our family, three generations take part and there is a degree of healthy competition ahead of, and during, the weekend. We have been doing it for enough years to have seen some of the changes in our own gardens, and are already wondering who will turn up on our feeders over the next year.
Binfield Environment Group can be contacted by email at binfieldeg@gmail.com or on Facebook.