BIRD NOTES

The winter is always an interesting time for garden birds lured in by the feeders.  All the usual birds soon found ours when we put them up in September, and the recent cold weather induced a frenzy of activity.

Redwings came on the November 5, stripped all the holly berries and were last seen on 14 November.  Some of the birds are already pairing up.  Great-spotted Woodpeckers were on a feeder together and later the male noisily chased the female round the trees, emitting an unusual double call.  Dunnocks, Robins, Nuthatches and Collared Doves have also been seen in pairs.  Crows and Jackdaws have been feeding on the lawn far more often than in previous years.

Siskins did not arrive until 23 January but were seen by Ross and Lynn a block away a couple of days earlier.  They also had a Brambling at the same time.

Wintering waterfowl numbers seem to be down this year.  There have been small numbers of Smew and Goldeneye at Thorpe Park and Goldeneye at Littleton.

Further to Chris's note above, you may gather that we live very close to him (between Weybridge Station and Brooklands Museum), and often compare bird notes.  (Not without some sense of rivalry at times - very friendly of course - over who has had the best/most birds/earliest sightings!) The surprising thing, given our proximity, is how different our garden records can be.  We think this may be partly because of differences in the feeding arrangements we use: for example, we put out a full banquet of peanuts, sunflower hearts, niger seed, mixed seed and fat balls (with occasional leftover bread) all year round, whereas Chris tends to feed less in the summer.

We wondered what other ENHS members felt about this? The RSPB seems to recommend year-round feeding, but at the other end of the spectrum, a German friend told us recently that the wildlife organisations over there recommend not feeding birds at all, on the basis that it encourages them to depend on humans and reduces their ability to forage from natural sources.  What do you do and how do your bird records compare with ours?  We put our weekly bird counts into the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Garden Birdwatch web page (see http://www.bto.org/), which is great fun as you can retrieve data on your sightings as follows (these are our records since October 2004):

Total number of species for your garden: 35

The maximum number of species you have seen in any single week is: 24

The average number of species you have seen in your garden is: 20

[You can also click on the species name to view weekly count summaries]

ROSS BAKER AND LYNN WHITFIELD