The New Year marks the biggest calendar moment for the RSPB, with the annual Big Garden Birdwatch weekend on January 24, 25, 26. It is the largest garden wildlife survey in the world. Thanks to the residents of Yorkshire and beyond, the RSPB can create a vital snapshot of garden birds across the country.
A garden playhouse is the perfect place for an hour of birdwatching.Eleanor Bentall (rspb-images.com)
Lookout for these popular visitors
HOUSE SPARROW – these noisy, energetic, birds have celebrated 21 years at number one on the Big Garden Birdwatch. Despite their top position, they’ve sadly suffered severe declines, with numbers in gardens dropping by nearly 60% since 1979. They’re sociable and live/nest communally in crevices in buildings, or Sparrow nestboxes. Males have a grey head and black bib with chestnut sides and white cheeks. The bigger the bib, the more dominant the male will be within its flock. Females have pale brown feathers all over, with a pale stripe behind the eye.
WOODPIGEON – The UK’s largest and commonest pigeon, the woodpigeon is largely grey with a white neck patch and white wing patches, clearly visible in flight. Although shy in the countryside it can be tame and approachable in towns and cities. Large numbers of woodpigeons migrate to the UK in the winter from the continent. You may see more of them in your gardens during the winter as they move from the countryside in search of food, and they’ll eat almost anything vegetarian. Woodpigeons suck up the water using their beak as a straw.
BLACKBIRD – one of the most common and most striking UK birds with the male’s bright orange-yellow beak and yellow eye-ring, its jet plumage lives up to its name. Confusingly, females are brown often with spots and streaks on their breasts. Their melodic song brings a sense of calm and conjures memories of summer afternoons. They can sometimes be heard singing in December and January. Resident Blackbirds stay here year-round but can be partially migratory within the UK during the winter.
STARLING – Noisy, sociable, and wonderful mimics, when seen close-up starlings boast an incredible sheen of metallic purple and green plumage. Their feathers are also flecked with white, which is especially noticeable in their winter plumage. Starlings spend a lot of the year in flocks. In the winter our resident birds are joined by those migrating from mainland Europe. You may be lucky enough to witness their mesmeric murmuration displays, as they undulate and dance across the twilight before settling into their chosen roosting spot for the night. The male’s beak will start to turn yellow from November, caused by carotenoid pigments from their diets, readying them for breeding turf wars next spring.
BLUE TIT – Once nicknamed ‘Tom Tit’ and ‘Titmouse’, their colourful mix of blue, yellow, white, and green makes the blue tit one of our most attractive and recognisable garden visitors. In winter, family flocks join up with other Tits as they search for food. During colder months blue tits need to consume the daily calorific equivalent of 300 insects, just to produce enough energy to survive the cold! They were infamous for following milkmen to take sneaky sips from milk bottles by pecking through the foil tops – but this has practically died out now with the introduction of semi-skimmed and skimmed milk and the decrease of doorstop deliveries.
Register for the Big Garden Birdwatch at rspb.org.uk/birdwatch
