Dear Readers, this weekend is the Big Garden Birdwatch here in the UK – as usual we’re being asked to record the birds in the garden for an hour, and I’ll certainly do it at some point, probably on Saturday before another wave of heavy rain comes in. But the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) is particularly keen for people to do it this year, for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, the long cold spell may well have impacted smaller birds, such as wrens and long-tailed tits, so it will be interesting to see how they’ve done compared to last year, when the winter wasn’t so harsh.

Fledgling long-tailed tits

Secondly, the RSPB want to check up on how many winter visitors such as fieldfare and redwing are still about – again, the cold conditions might either have chased them away or kept them in the UK for longer.

Redwing

Interestingly, at the same time as we’re being encouraged to top up the bird feeders, the RSPB has actually stopped selling bird tables because they can be such vectors for disease, in particular trichomonosis, which has been responsible for a huge fall in the numbers of greenfinches. The disease is passed in bird saliva, so it’s a problem where birds pick up seeds, husk them and then let them fall, hence the more expensive sunflower hearts, which have no husks, are less dangerous. All in all, I’d agree that having a garden full of plants with berries and seeds is probably the healthiest way to go, but not everybody has the luxury of that much space. Plus, there is also little doubt that feeding and providing water in the most difficult seasons of the year probably aids bird survival, so it’s a tough decision. There was a very interesting talk on the whole subject at the Wildlife Gardening Forum Symposium a few days ago which I haven’t caught up with yet, but will report back when I do.

In the meantime, I just looked at the results for the first day of the Garden Birdwatch and the house sparrow is at number one, for the 21st year in a row. Even so, this species has declined by sixty percent since the very first Birdwatch in 1979, and we have lost an estimated 38 million birds from the skies in the past sixty years. Terrifying numbers, and citizen science projects such as this one provide a snapshot of what exactly is in our gardens and parks over one January weekend. It provides a picture of changing numbers, not just for this year but over time, and without information, scientists can’t help to deduce what is going on for each species. So if you’re in the UK, and you’ve got an hour to spend, you know what to do…

House Sparrows