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)

Where art thou Romeo? And Juliet?

I am grieving. I have recently lost two friends, and I hadn’t even known them very long. We’d only just got on first name terms; to them I was Blurp, or sometimes Blarp. To me they were Romeo and Juliet, and they were moorhens.

For those of you who don’t have moorhens in your neck of the woods (note: they don't live in woods), see the pics. They’re a ground-dwelling bird but always live close to water. They’re closely related to the coot but seem less interested in swimming.

Anyway, about three months ago as I was working in the garden, a lone moorhen felt brave enough to join me, although at a safe distance. This was a real novelty, because in the two years we’d lived beside the river we hadn’t seen any moorhens, only coots, ducks, geese, swans and the odd grebe.

I cautiously backed inside, got a handful of birdseed and threw it towards him. (Yes I know, I’ve automatically called the bird a ‘him’ without any thought to gender orientation. But wait, you’ll see I was right). Predictably he fled in a panic having just had the equivalent of a hailstorm fall on him, but he did come back after a little while and began pecking at the seeds.

I kept my distance and carried on with sawing timber, my job of the moment. I wanted him to feel that I didn’t really care one way or another, and that he could dine in safety and security. Nonchalance was my middle name, though I kept a watchful eye.

Over the next few weeks the moorhen visited the garden fairly regularly, and then daily. He’d wait for me (well, for breakfast) each morning, would even emit a ‘blarp’ or a ‘blurp’ sound to remind me he was there, and of course I obliged with a menu of dried mealworms and an exotic ‘all seasons’ birdseed mix. I know, Michelin Star treatment right? He hardly flinched now when the birdseed landed over him, but also I started scattering it slightly nearer me each day, and each day he would venture closer towards me.

The closest we ever got was about five feet, but I felt we’d reached an understanding: he wouldn’t come any closer and I wouldn’t lunge at him and stick him in the oven. We were both happy with that arrangement.

Then one day he turned up with a ‘friend’, who my wife Liz and I presumed was a female. Spring was approaching (still is, sigh) so obviously a young man’s fancy turns towards such things. Now we had names for them, and while Romeo and Juliet won’t win any awards for creativity, it suited them. In return however they still called me Blarp.

Star-crossed lovers

But I was delighted that Romeo had led Juliet into our garden to show her where you could get a quick meal without even having to forage. Liz and I hoped that come nesting time the pair would return with their chicks and introduce us to the family. Adding to our anticipation – and also confirming that Romeo was indeed male – we witnessed the pair mating in the garden one day. I gave them some extra bird mix after that session; I figured they might be hungry.

And so it continued. Some days it would be just Romeo, and some both him and Juliet. We bought a bigger bag of seed mix.

And then one morning about a month ago, Romeo didn’t turn up first thing as he usually did; I didn’t see him till almost lunchtime, no apologies, no explanations. I asked him where he’d been but he remained quiet. He did eat his lunch though, and then disappeared.

The next day there was no sign of him, or Juliet. Or the day after that. And now, four weeks later, I can only assume that Romeo and Juliet have gone the same way as their namesakes. Oh woe, and not even a ‘suspitious’ friar as prime suspect, nor any trace of poison! In fact, not even any corpses. For a few days we classified them as missing, but have had to revise this status to be 'missing presumed dead'. We suspect a fox.

I still raise the bedroom blind each morning in the hope of seeing them, or hearing a ‘blarp’, but the garden is empty. So am I.