Birds Count, so Let's Count the Birds

The gardener's friend. Image: Mike Bodnar

(Note: This article was first published on 25 January 2022)

It sounds like a line from an old folk song: 'Where have all the birds gone, long time passing?' Which would be cute if it weren't for the fact that in the UK an estimated 38 million birds have disappeared over the past fifty years. 

I feel somehow responsible, since it was just over fifty years ago I left England and emigrated to New Zealand. Coincidence I hope. Please don't shoot the messenger. I have a solid alibi: I wasn't here, but for me it's become something of a reversed impostor syndrome.

So when I returned to England almost ten years ago it was to find my homeland sadly quiet in the birdsong department. Government records show that all birds decreased between 1970 and 2018 by 11 percent, but it was farmland birds that suffered the most with a 57 percent decline. Woodland birds also fell silent to the tune of 27 percent in the same period. There are other stats, but those are depressing enough so let's stop there. You get the picture.

I only mention it here because my fifty-year absence dramatically magnified the scale of the decline; I was shocked, and I still am.

Some farming practices are to blame.
Image: Shaun Cooper

Look up why the bird population has declined globally and Wikipedia will tell you it's because of (surprise, surprise) human activity. This, the online font of knowledge says, comprises: '...the increased human population, destruction of habitat (through development for habitation, logging, animal and single-crop agriculture, and invasive plants), bird trafficking, egg collecting, pollution (in fertilizers impacting native plants and diversity, pesticides, herbicides directly impacting them as well as the plant and animal food birds eat, including the food for their food source further down along the food chain), and climate change and global warming. Due to the increasing human population, people seek additional space from what was once wild. This is a major contributor to extinction.'

In short, if we all left the planet tomorrow the birds would be just fine.

The Big Birdwatch makes us citizen scientists.
Image: RSPB

So, since Elon Musk isn't quite ready to transport us all to Mars yet, what can be done? Well, this weekend (from Friday 28 January through Sunday 30th) is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds' (RSPB) annual 'Big Garden Birdwatch' event, in which people like you and me are invited to contribute data on the birds in our gardens. For a brief moment we can become citizen scientists.

In itself, sitting in the garden wrapped up in a blanket counting what's left of the birds won't bring the 38 million missing avians back, but what it can do - and hopefully does do - is help inform government policy. Data are important, if only to know that the decline is continuing, because without that data there is little but anecdotal evidence.

So I for one will be watching the garden for an hour on one of the appointed days and counting birds. It is, literally, the least I can do.

An obliging blue tit. Image: Mike Bodnar

Last year's count was a miserable affair at our place, with maybe a couple of pigeons and a blue tit or two, but in the lead-up to this latest bird count I've been pleased to note up to nine sparrows at once, multiple blue tits including one long-tailed, a blackbird, two robins, two moorhens (because we live beside water), a wren, a crow, a magpie, and of course the ubiquitous pigeons. I feel there should also be a partridge in a pear tree.

It's possible that this year's (so far) mild winter - at least where we live - has been more conducive to birdlife in the garden. This week last year it was snowing. So not only will milder weather perhaps encourage more birds, it should also result in more citizen scientists observing them; maybe this year there will be even more than the million people who took part in the Big Birdwatch in 2021.

Long-tailed tit, on the up. Image: Green Park

And it's not all bad news; the RSPB reports that since the survey began there has been an
increase in great tits by 68 percent, while in 2016 long-tailed tits increased by 44 per cent. That's not to do with an increase in people taking part; the more who join in the more robust the data.

The RSPB's Big Birdwatch is the world's largest wildlife survey and has been running since 1979. Although initially aimed just at children (it was first featured on the Blue Peter programme on television), today anyone and everyone is encouraged to join in.

So now you're wondering, how can I contribute? It's easy, and you don't need binoculars or any special equipment other than a pencil and paper. On either the 28th, 29th or 30th of January you simply:

1. Watch the birds around you for one hour;

2. Count how many of each species of bird lands on your patch;

3. Go online and tell the RSPB what you saw.

Check out the details on the RSPB's site (there's a video), get your coat, scarf, beanie and gloves ready (or you can do the observing through the window) and become a citizen scientist for an hour. 

If you're wondering why you should bother, well, I can think of 38 million reasons. 

DOWNLOAD THE RSPB BIRDWATCH GUIDE (pdf)

Flight Path

Last October we bought a bird feeder, one of those clear tubes you fill with tasty morsels which dispense onto a saucer at the bottom. There are four wire perches hang around the edge so the birds have somewhere to hang on while they peck away. Apart from magpies of course, they’re too big to land on the perches, and instead glare frustratedly at the seeds as a child might gaze through the window of a closed sweet shop. Except a child wouldn’t be doing that from on top of a satellite dish.

The bird feeder was a miserable failure. Nothing came, not even a boring sparrow or two. The feeder was full, swinging in plain sight, beckoning to the local London avian population and open all hours as autumn turned into winter and the daylight faded earlier and earlier each day. Despite the onset of the cold and dark the birds totally ignored it.

Well, to be honest, a magpie did discover it, and tried in vain to find a way to access the seeds in the saucer, but magpies can’t hover, and as mentioned, their size precludes them from bird feeders such as ours. I took pity and chucked some seed onto the balcony’s fake grass, for which it seemed cautiously grateful.

An upstart crow

I’m not a bird-watcher particularly, never really understood the appeal of twitching and how it excites people like Bill Oddie and Bill Bailey, and probably many other less-famous Bills. But once we’d put the feeder up I desperately wanted to see it used; the magpie didn’t count. And then I realised, maybe we don’t have many birds locally in St. Ockwell. I began to view our local environment with a critical eye, and it dawned on me with a sinking heart that there are bugger-all birds in our neighbourhood; and if they are there they're all lesser-spotted.

Oh yes, there are seagulls and pigeons, and of course crows, but none of them can deftly land on the perches of our bird feeder either. I wanted tits, for example. Yes I know, snigger, snigger. How juvenile can you get. Bird watching is a ripe field for smut and innuendo, what with great tits, shags and boobies to entertain you. But if that’s what makes you giggle then you’re a right little bustard. I’d rather be a bird watcher than a word botcher. (See what I did there?)

Great Tit  (oh behave!)

No, the thing is, we don’t exactly live in the Forest of Stockwell; there’s a paucity of trees around our little pied-à-terre. If I look out from the balcony where the bird feeder is I can count exactly two-and-a-half trees, the half being more of an overgrown shrub with tree-aspirations – a Wannabe Tree. The majority of things flying overhead are Boeings and Airbuses, being as we are on the flight path to Heathrow.  Yet if I walk literally round a couple of corners into the posh part I am in tree-lined Georgian streets, with gardens that have trees in them also. That, I’m guessing, is where the birds are. I would be if I had feathers. Or loads of money.

All I needed was one bird, just one, to discover our bird feeder, and then it could go and spread the word. They would come in their thousands, or at least maybe a handful from the classy streets, I hoped. And then one day it happened; a sparrow called, grabbed a mouthful and flew off. Some days after, an indeterminate slim thing with a grey cap perched for a few seconds, and then – hallelujah – a great tit gorged itself before taking off in a blur of black and yellow. I know it was a great tit because I had my camera to hand, ready to capture any avian visitors, plus we have the RSPB’s guide book on the bookshelf. Definitely a great tit.

Need I tell you?

Since then word has indeed got around, and now almost every morning there’s a parade of sparrows,

a robin, the great tit (it always seems to be the same one)and – still feeding off the fake grass pickings – the magpie. They each make multiple visits. I am resisting naming them for fear of becoming boring, but tentatively they’re all called Bill.

To top that off, I got up in the middle of the night recently, thinking it must be close to dawn because I could hear a bird singing. Assuming this was the overture to the dawn chorus (or, in our neighbourhood, more of a dawn squawk) I didn’t pay much attention until I discovered it was only 2am. I’ve heard the bird on other nights too, and I now believe it to be a nightingale – there was magic abroad in the air. (I know what one sounds like because I had a close encounter with a nightingale at 11 o’clock one summer’s evening on a French canal, and here’s the recording to prove it.) Anyway, if one can sing in Berkeley Square, why can’t another croon on a council housing estate?

So now every morning at breakfast I sit on the couch twitching. I’m hoping more and different birds will come, as I’m propped there with camera in one hand, RSPB book in the other. I’m still not a serious bird watcher. Honestly. I’m only doing it for a lark.