Dear Readers, after I posted about my Open University doughball experiment yesterday, someone very wisely asked me about what happens if it’s not just magpies who eat them. Well, that turns out to be a very interesting point, as today the squirrels discovered that they have a taste for bright orange suet (though we have since topped up the bird feeders, so they’ve reverted to eating the sunflower hearts instead).
The point of the experiment is really to interpret the results – I’m pretty sure that the magpies, who can see not only all the colours that humans can but ultra-violet as well, may have a preference for orange or yellow balls (my guess is probably orange as it’s closer to the colour of ripe fruit). Squirrels, on the other hand, have dichromatic vision, which is closer to colour blindness in humans – they therefore can’t distinguish between green and red, but should in theory be fine with telling the difference between orange and yellow. Will they care though? Only time will tell. And they’d better get a move on, as my assignment is due on 10th February, only two and a bit weeks away.
Anyhow, onto the Great Garden Birdwatch. There was a flurry of excitement at the start after the feeders were filled up, followed by a visit from a cat, and then the squirrels rampaged around the garden like lunatics, flicking their tails at one another and generally being manic. As usual I saw a reasonable range of birds, but I’m still convinced that they don’t come when it’s the hour of the GGBW just to be annoying.
Anyhow, the total count was:
2 Blue Tits
1 Coal Tit
1 Long-tailed Tit (I’m sure there were others but I just caught the tail-end of the visit)
1 Collared Dove
1 Robin
3 Great Tits
1 Woodpigeon
3 Starlings
and
2 Ring-necked Parakeets (who managed to fend off the squirrels for a surprising amount of time, and who had great fun mobbing the cat who walked along the top of the new 6-foot fence with a feigned nonchalance that reminded me of me walking into a party with a lot of people that I don’t know).
Anyhow, that’s that for another year! I saw only 16 individual birds, which was less than the average of 27, and makes me feel rather inadequate (irrational, I know), though my Starling and Great Tit numbers were above the national average, as was my parakeet count. I note from the count so far that the House Sparrow and Blue Tit are still number one and two respectively, with the Woodpigeon up at number three, the Starling down at number four, the Blackbird holding steady at number five and the Robin up at number six. Still, there’s a whole day of counting yet to come, and the results are due in mid April.
Which reminds me that the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland has just reported on the New Year Plant Hunt (very speedy!) – I shall have a look, and report back soon.
I am very interested in your count – which makes me appreciate even more the variety of birds that regularly visit my garden. Despite the heat yesterday, I noted 27 different species in the space of an hour – I didn’t count the individuals though.
Whenever I visit South Africa, I’m always amazed at the sheer variety of bird life. Every dead tree seems to have a raptor or a vulture or something else interesting sitting on top of it. We really are so nature-deprived here in the UK, and a lot of it has happened in my lifetime.
For the first time, I did the Birdwatch in a small local park with others – so we saw species I’ve never seen while doing it in gardens, including a Little Egret and a Heron. We saw 29 species in the hour, and then a Grey Wagtail put in appearance two minutes too late. But there were very few individuals of each species, fewer than I would normally have expected in my garden. Perhaps that’s as they had more space to get away from each other and no feeders to cause them to congregate.
That’s a very good count, and isn’t it interesting how often the most fascinating/rare birds turn up when you’ve just finished 🙂