Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos, #403)

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Song Thrush is really a bird of this season in the garden, singing loudly every morning. They are more heard than seen, as when they are on the ground they are often skulking around the corners of the garden. They appear in January, sing from February, then after breeding totally disappear in August, only to return again in the mid-winter. Looking at the BTO Garden Birdwatch data this is a pretty typical pattern. The data also shows that there is a strong decline in the number of gardens where song thrushes are reported, down from 45-50% in the early ‘90s, to less than 20% now, so we’re very lucky to still have them.

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#306 Green Woodpecker

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Happy New Year 2020: Was great to get a photo of this Green Woodpecker that was digging around in next door’s lawn for a while this morning. While they are always around in the village, they are heard more often than seen, and seen flying through much more often than perching obligingly on the ground like this one. A nice garden bird to start the year with.

#306 Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis)

#306 Green Woodpecker (Picus viridis)

One year of BTO Garden Birdwatch

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It's the anniversary of my starting the BTO Garden Birdwatch, logging all the birds in the garden over the course of a year. As well as birds I’ve recorded butterflies, mammals & amphibians. These graphics are off the BTO site, showing the frequency of the most common birds that actually use the garden (pure fly-overs are not counted).

Surprisingly out of the 47 bird species I recorded during the year, only four were seen absolutely every week: Woodpigeon, Blue Tit, Goldfinch & House Sparrow. The rest of the top 10 were Robin which only missed one week (reporting rate = 98%), Blackbird with reporting rate of 96%, Collared Dove, Jackdaw and Great Tit all on 92%, then quite a big drop to Wren at 75%. Most of these species disappeared during late Summer / early Autumn, when the species count was at it’s lowest.

At the other end of the scale six birds only showed once: Fieldfare during winter snows, Whitethroat, Siskin & Hawfinch during Spring migration and Grey Wagtail & Lesser Whitethroat also migrants during the late summer.