Garden and Green

RSPB Birdwatch - Robin to the Rescue

Location - The backgarden of my parents house (borrowed for the afternoon! I haven't got a garden), in the suburban outskirts of Newcastle, at the end of street is a long Dene which is a local name for a steep ravine with mixed woodland that stretches for about 1.5 miles. There are a number of these Denes that slice through urban Newcastle, because of the steepness they have avoided development and provide rich wildlife corridors, home to red squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, toads, owls etc. All have streams that end up in the River Tyne. I believe they were formed during the last Ice age?

Time - After a Sunday Roast at 3pm.

Report - I sat down in the conservatory with a pen and the handy chart downloaded from the RSPB website. The main birds featured were

Blackbird, Blue Tit, Carrion Crow, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Dunnock, Feral Pigeon, Goldfinch, Great tit, Greenfinch, House Sparrow, Jackdaw, Long Tailed Tit, Magpie, Robin, Song Thrush, Starling, Woodpigeon, Wren

If you saw anything more exotic you had to make a note seperately. All of the above birds I am sure can be found in the area. When I was a kid in the 1980s, I was really quite into Birdspotting and would often disappear into the dene with my binoculars and collins bird guide, and laze around in one of my many dens that criss crossed the woods with a Highland Toffee and can of Coke. The best part was always finding nests with eggs then coming back to find they had all hatched with hideously ugly but cute chicks sqwaking for some food. So, back to the birds in question. I am sure the population of House Sparrows in the area has plummeted in recent years, they used to be everywhere but now you see very few. Magpies were never around when I was growing up as I distinctly remembering to being annoyed there was never any around, considering the local footie team is the Magpies. However, they are now everywhere and so it seems are Wood Pigeons, which seem to have flourished in recent years.

I remember seeing a large thistle on my way to primary school which I counted had 10 Goldfinches feeding on it. It was a memorable sight, the very field is now home to a thundering part of the A1 Western Bypass, so this must have affected bird numbers. Blackbirds are my favourite garden bird and love it on a light summers night when you can hear a Mr Blackbird singing quite beautifully from the top of a telephone pole or streetlight.

So I went outside and put some nuts on the bird table and began my watch at 3pm, getting on a bit but still thought I might see a few birds. Well, I could hear birds twittering in the Dene, but it was a bird free zone in the garden. At around 3.30pm a Blackbird swooped above and I felt like shouting 'Somebody stop that bird!!' but I couldn't count it as the instruction were the birds had to be in your garden.

Sitting staring at an empty garden began to get a bit tedious but then at 3.50 pm a perfect Robin landed to spare me an empty record sheet. It stood with its chest puffed out, almost saying 'Over here get me on the survey!' So I finally could add something to the national study. It might not have been much and I think if the hour had been earlier in the day more birds might have been around but it felt good to add this little patch of England to the UK wide project.

Today, I submitted my results online and it showed, that at that point over 80,000 people had submitted their records, which in total amounts to a very comprehensive and detailed census of our nations bird life. It will be interesting to see the results which the RSPB plan to release sometime in March.

RSPB Site

The RSPB has:

Over a million members, including nearly 150,000 youth members.

A staff of over 1,300 people and over 13,000 volunteers.

An income of over £50 million per year.

200 nature reserves covering almost 130,000 hectares, home to 80% of our rarest or most threatened bird species.

A UK headquarters, three national offices and nine regional offices.

A local network of 175 local groups and more than 110 youth groups.

Search page dedicated

to the environment.