Looking for Great Tits

Next weekend my son Milo and myself are going to be looking out for Great Tits, but no I don’t mean on the top decks of cruise ships. Next weekend is the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, an annual event and part of the world’s largest wildlife survey. Our pack arrived this week so Milo and myself got over-excited and put in some practice.

The idea of the birdwatch is to put an hour aside on the weekend of the 30th 31st January and note all birds that visit your garden. The results can be recorded using the paper chart provided by the RSPB or online. The chart is lovely with pictures of British garden birds so you don’t need to be an ornithologist to take part.

I am lucky enough  to have a decent sized garden and a bird table at the front so we get quite a lot of birds. There is a robin who comes and watches me digging my vegetable patch waiting for juicy worms in the summer and a pair of collared doves which are rarely seen apart. These though do have a tendency to sit on my chimney cooing loves songs to each other at 5am so I have a bit of a love hate relationship with them.

I have my disguise ready so that the I’m camouflaged from the birds and Milo has worked out his best vantage spot.

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch has been running since 1979 and it was my own mother that introduced me to it. From the data collated over the years we know that sparrows and starlings are still the most common British garden birds but their numbers have fallen 58% and 80% respectively over the 36 year period. This will be the first time that I have got involved in the survey and I am really looking forward to it. It will be good to spend an hour doing something different together and to be a part of something important in maintaining our wildlife for the future.