NEW FOREST RSPB LOCAL GROUP

GARDEN BIRD SURVEY

July - September 2011

Several people commented on their forms that they were not seeing as many birds as usual in their gardens during this summer particularly in September. We had also noticed that the smaller birds such as tits and finches were difficult to find on our group field trips. However the percentage figures in our tables are very similar to those for previous years and so it seems that most of us were still seeing the same species as usual but in smaller numbers than in past summers. Certainly in my own garden there were fewer goldfinches, greenfinches, blue tits and great tits around. A possible reason for this might be that there was an abundance of natural food available and so the birds did not need to visit our feeders so often. When we visited Testwood Lakes reserve in September the wardens were not filling up the feeders at the visitor centre because there was so much natural food available. There was one notable exception in Lyndhurst where in one garden over thirty house sparrows were recorded every week up to a maximum of fifty nine! I had thirty two starlings on one day and then did not see any in the garden for four weeks although they flew over nearly every day. One interesting report concerned nesting failures in a garden; blackbirds and robins had both failed three times and no blue tits and only one great tit pair were successful. Woodpigeons and collared doves were did succeed. If this pattern was widespread it could relate to the smaller numbers of birds many of us noticed. Most summers one or two of us record willow warblers but this year a quarter of us saw them but only occasionally and six of us had chiffchaffs. A surprise was a wheatear in Hordle and one person had several visits from a lesser spotted woodpecker, one of the benefits of living close to the forest. Great tit and carrion crow numbers were slightly down but house sparrow and coal tit showed an increase. Starlings appeared in more gardens this year, up from 59% to 71% of gardens but chaffinches dropped from 88% to 69% of gardens. Last summer long-tailed tits showed a considerable drop in numbers after the preceding cold winter but fortunately this years recording rates are very similar to last years and so it seems that they have ridden out the second cold winter quite well with over half of us seeing them this summer. As usual many of us recorded swallows and house martins over head with four people recording swallows in their gardens but only one person recording house martins. Other rarer summer visitors were whitethroat and garden warbler both of which only appeared in one garden each. Sparrowhawks were seen in a third of our gardens after being seen less often for a while and buzzards are now being seen quite regularly in gardens close to open country and also near t the middle of Lyndhurst. A hobby flew over a garden near to Sway. Other birds seen were bullfinch (8 gardens);pied wagtail, siskin and black-headed gull (7); chiffchaff (6); blackcap, herring gull, tawny owl and common buzzard (5); swallow, feral pigeon and stock dove (4); goldcrest, marsh tit, rook, heron and pheasant (3); mistle thrush (2); grey wagtail, mallard, house martin, lesser spotted woodpecker, kingfisher, kestrel, whitethroat, garden warbler, wheatear (1 garden). Table 1: Percent/Birdweeks Table 2: Percent/Birdgardens

1 Blackbird 100 1 1 Robin 100 1 3 Woodpigeon 98 1 The percentage figure in Table 1 is calculated 3 Blue tit 98 5 by adding the percentage of weeks that each 5 Greenfinch 95 5 observer records any species and dividing by 6 Dunnock 93 7 the number of observers. If an observer records 6 Great tit 93 1 a species for 9 weeks in a 12 week period this is 8 Collared dove 86 11 75% for that observer. If the total of all the 8 Magpie 86 9 percentages for 50 observers is 3000 this gives 10 Goldfinch 76 10 a percent/birdweeks figure of 60. If half of the 11 House sparrow 71 13 observers each record a species for half of the 11 Starling 71 15 weeks we would get 25% for the 11 Coal tit 71 12 percent/birdweeks figure. 14 Chaffinch 69 8 15 Carrion crow 67 14 The percent/birdgardens figure is simply the 16 Nuthatch 64 15 number of gardens in which a species has been 16 Wren 64 15 recorded divided by the number of recorders 18 Great spotted woodpecker 60 15 and multiplied by 100. 19 Long-tailed tit 57 19 20 Song thrush 52 19 The last column in each table gives the 21 Green woodpecker 38 21 corresponding rank position for the 22 Jackdaw 36 21 corresponding quarter of the previous year. 23 Sparrowhawk 33 23 24 Jay 29 24 DR 241111 25 Willow warbler 26 -