Big Garden Birdwatch

My Big Garden Birdwatch results

I was sneaky this year and timed the start of my count for the Big Garden Birdwatch with the arrival of the starlings on the sycamores on the railway embankment. Most of the local open spaces being busy with Saturday mid-morning dog walkers the starlings turned up mob-handed. They and the spadgers made up most of the numbers, with everything else either making a cameo appearance or not turning up at all. I've no idea where the great tits have been this past few days. I had hoped to be able to scrape the list off the RSPB web site but it just shows you your "top ten" in graphical form. The tally for the whole morning was:

Black-headed Gull 6 overhead

Blackbird 1

Blue Tit 2

Carrion Crow 1

Coal Tit 1

Collared Dove 3

Common Gull 1 overhead

Feral Pigeon 2

Goldfinch 2

House Sparrow 25

Jackdaw 2

Magpie 2

Robin 1

Rook 1

Starling 26

Over on the school playing field there were 66 black-headed gulls and a couple of common gulls. The only large gull was a rather dainty looking first-Winter herring gull. The magpies seem to have given up on nest building for now though they're noisily in occupation of the tree ready for when the mood takes them again.

It seems strange to get this far into January without seeing any grey geese or whooper swans, pintail, wigeon or shelduck. I keep finding myself making plans to go for a walk over the Salford mosses but while it's only ten minutes on the train it's ten minutes breaking lockdown so I have to knock it on the head. The charms of places within walking distance in miserable weather is wearing a bit thin, though the lengthening days mean that every man and his dog isn't trying to share the same space in the few hours available. Still, could be worse.