Big garden bird watch

Best counts for the hour from my garden were as follows.

52 House sparrows

90 Starlings

1 Song thrush

1 Dunnock

5 Greenfinch

3 Hooded crows

4 Common gulls

1 Redwing

1 Herring gull

It was a snowy garden I had for this years count. I think the conditions have swollen the numbers some what with a lot of Starlings and Sparrows about. However saying that latter in the day we had quite a few more Sparrows in at one time. The Starlings also flocked in and at one time there were easily over two hundred in one flock that settled. It was nice to find a Dunnock below the shrubs. It was a garden first for us here as was the solitary Redwing that briefly appeared during the counting hour. I don’t know about overall scientific validity of the nation wide count and as a BFer pointed out its more of an exercise to get the public involved and thinking positively about garden birds. Whatever it is it certainly produced results for me with to new species’ for the garden list.