New Forest Rspb Local Group s1

NEW FOREST RSPB LOCAL GROUP

GARDEN BIRD SURVEY

October to December 2014

Last year I reported that coal tit numbers were well down on the previous year’s figures and this year’s results remain similar to last year. For 2013 their percentages fell from 69.2% to 25.7% in the birdweeks list and from 89% to 56% of gardens compared to 2012 but for 2014 we have 28.3% of weeks and 67.5% of gardens. However looking back at the birdweeks figures over 9 years there is considerable variation, (55.4, 60.1, 82.3, 68.1, 63.9, 40.3, 69.2, 25.7 and 28.3). There does not seem to be a definite trend but the last two years are much lower than the average. In my own garden I have only seen coal tits twice throughout this winter.

Blackcap and siskin numbers are also down on previous years. This may be due to good supplies of food in the wild and the mild and sunny autumn. The BTO Garden Birdwatch reports a drop in siskin numbers over the whole country and suggests that this is related to the availability of seed from spruce cones, a favourite natural food. We only had siskins in three gardens including the hotspots around Lyndhurst.

We had more jays than usual with jays making it into both lists and as usual pied wagtails appeared more often in the winter while grey wagtails were seen in three gardens. Last year we had an increase in sightings of song thrushes and this has been maintained. Feral pigeons again made the birdweeks list but only by virtue of the fact they were almost ever present in four gardens. Stock doves and bullfinches kept up their recent trend of being seen in more gardens whilst goldcrests made in into the gardens list for the first time.

A rare species spent a few hours in a garden in Sway; a pair of willow tits sat around long enough for the lucky observer to consult his Collin’s Bird Guide app on his i-phone to be sure of the identification of this very rare species in Hampshire. They were seen briefly the following day and then disappeared. One person reported a raven in the garden and several people saw them flying over.

There were no surprises in the numbers of birds recorded but several species did show an increase in sightings; these were magpie, starling, house sparrow, crow, great spotted woodpecker and nuthatch. One person had four great spotted woodpeckers in the garden at the same time. Several people saw winter thrushes flying over but very few actually had them in their gardens.

Other species reported during the quarter were green woodpecker (8 gardens); sparrowhawk (7); pheasant, black-headed gull and herring gull (6); chiffchaff (5); rook, blackcap, grey heron, feral pigeon and tawny owl (4); marsh tit, siskin, redwing and grey wagtail (3); mistle thrush and tree creeper (2); reed bunting, fieldfare, willow tit, raven and common buzzard (1 garden). Table 1: Percent/Birdweeks Table 2: Percent/Birdgardens

1 Blackbird 100 1 1 Robin 100 1 The percentage figure in Table 1 is calculated 1 Wood pigeon 100 1 by adding the percentage of weeks that each 1 Blue tit 100 1 observer records any species and dividing by 1 Dunnock 100 1 the number of observers. If an observer records 6 Magpie 97 7 a species for 9 weeks in a 12 week period this is 7 Great tit 94 6 75% for that observer. If the total of all the 8 Collared dove 82 8 percentages for 50 observers is 3000 this gives 8 Chaffinch 82 11 a percent/birdweeks figure of 60. If half of the 10 Starling 79 9 observers each record a species for half of the 10 Wren 79 11 weeks we would get 25% for the 10 Long-tailed tit 79 11 percent/birdweeks figure. 13 Goldfinch 76 11 14 House sparrow 73 15 The percent/birdgardens figure is simply the 14 Greenfinch 73 15 number of gardens in which a species has been 16 Carrion crow 70 17 recorded divided by the number of recorders 16 Song thrush 70 14 and multiplied by 100. 18 Coal tit 67 18 19 Great spotted woodpecker 58 19 The last column in each table gives the 20 Jackdaw 52 21 corresponding rank position for the 21 Nuthatch 48 20 corresponding quarter of the previous year. 22 Jay 39 - DR 260215 23 Pied wagtail 30 23 23 Goldcrest 30 - 25 Bullfinch 27 - Stock dove 27 -