Counting on friends to live
It was the first chill in the air after the unseasonably warm start to the year, and the woodpigeons were lining up in the garden for a hearty meal.
A row of half a dozen birds, purple breast feathers puffed up for extra insulation, sat patiently waiting their turn to scavenge under the bird feeders.
There seems to be an unwritten agreement between the blue tits, robins, dunnocks and house sparrows that work their way through the bird food we hang out and the woodpigeons, who mop up any spilled seed that drops to the ground.
Such are the small birds’ bad table manners that the pigeons seem to be getting heftier by the day. It’s hardly a zoology class example of symbiosis, but certainly a mutual cooperation that works well for birds more associated with the countryside than suburbia.
Some days we have counted up to 14 woodpigeons resting in the hawthorn hedgerow in our garden, a tally exceeding that recorded by youngsters in the RSPB’s Big Schools Birdwatch last January, when an average of nine of the birds were spotted per school.
The fact woodpigeons were the most numerous birds seen dotted around playing fields mirrors the way they have also become one of the most frequent visitors to the nation’s gardens.
Next weekend, January 28 to 30, sees the RSPB roll out its annual Big Garden Birdwatch, and it is hoping more than a million people will take part in the world’s biggest survey of its kind.
Since the first BGB in 1979, there has been a tenfold increase in the number of woodpigeons sighted in gardens and today the national breeding population stands at more than 5.1million pairs.
The growth of oilseed rape as a crop – a favourite woodpigeon food – and the popularity of feeding garden birds have been driving forces for the 150 per cent increase in breeding numbers.
Climate change factors could also be behind why many more broods, sometimes six per year, survive.
For details of how to take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch, see rspb.org.uk. You will only be counting for an hour.
There seems to be an unwritten rule between pigeons and sparrows