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Forty years of birds on the feeder… and counting
How much has changed since we’ve been keeping tabs on birds for the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch, asks Kate Bradbury
any happy returns to the Big Garden Birdwatch (BGBW), which turns 40 next weekend. The first took place in 1979, when children from the RSPB’s Young Ornithologists’ Club were asked to count the birds in their garden on the same weekend in January. Only 300 children were expected to enter, but the RSPB received more than 34,000 forms in 30 bin liners. Who knew counting birds was such a thing? It took weeks to sift through all the results.
Fast forward to 2019 and the BGBW is the biggest event in the RSPB’s calendar. It’s open to all – adults and children, RSPB members and non-members alike. It includes the 2000-strong Big Schools’ Birdwatch, and generates 8000 new members and around £1000 in donations each year. Mercifully, 75 per cent of the records are now logged online.
Mike Clarke, the chief executive of the RSPB, has watched the Birdwatch grow since he started working for the charity 30 years ago, and brims with pride at its success.
“It helps us to keep a finger on the pulse of the natural world,” he tells me. “It’s not often that we get data from gardens and it’s a good way to see how wildlife is faring.”
The BGBW isn’t just about gathering data. It’s about engaging communities, fostering a love of nature in children and showing governments how many people care about birds and wildlife. “For me,” says Clarke, “half a million people giving up their time each January to count birds shows just how much people care about the natural world.”
The great thing about winter birdwatches is that anything can turn up in your garden, with availability of food in the wild, plus conditions in continental Europe, dictating what we might see.
As a general rule, the colder it is, the better. With frozen ground, ice and snow, food is harder to find, forcing more birds into gardens for easy pickings. What’s more, food shortages in eastern Europe encourage more birds to migrate to our shores for winter, while high winds can blow migrating birds off course. Some years we’ll have a “waxwing winter”, with higher-than-average numbers of waxwings turning up from Russia and Scandinavia, where they breed. In 2017’s Birdwatch, waxwings were seen in 11 times more gardens than in the previous few years. The following autumn we had a huge influx of hawfinches from Norway, with many staying for winter and turning up in gardens. We might spot groups of migrant fieldfares and redwings feasting on berries and windfall fruit. Odd-looking birds on the feeder might be brambling, redpoll or siskin. Look closely at a roving flock of tits and you may spot a goldcrest among them. Some years really rare birds turn up: American robin, black-throated thrush, common rose finch and little bunting have all been recorded for the BGBW, thousands of miles from where they should have been. It’s always worth keeping an eye out.
When I asked on Twitter “what’s the most unusual bird you’ve seen in your garden in winter?” I received hundreds of replies, with my favourites including waxwings devouring rowan and cotoneaster berries, migrating woodcocks flying into windows, and water birds such as coot, little egret, water rail and even turnstone turning up at ponds. Jacquie Hahn told me her grandfather was astonished to spot two crossbills in his garden. Usually found in coniferous woodland, they may have been blown off-course by the wind or been extremely hungry. “It was a particularly bad winter,” she said, “but still not a common sight in Fife.”
Still, these birds rarely turn up for the Birdwatch itself. It’s as if they know we are waiting, our noses pressed