By John Knox
Once more the cheerful, singing chaffinch has won top place in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch.
Like 45,000 other Scots, I spent an hour at my garden window one dull weekend in January to count the birds I saw, and then sent in my results. It was rather like filling out the census form, but without the questions on ethnicity or whether the birds in my residence spoke Gaelic, English or Scots.
The good news is that our small garden birds have had a good winter. Numbers are up on the year before, perhaps because the previous winter was so bad but also, the RSPB says, because more garden-owners were feeding their birds through the snowy days.
The number of long-tailed tits almost doubled. Coal tits were up by 17 per cent, treecreepers by 150 per cent. One of the exceptions was the little wren – their numbers fell by 19 per cent.
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Top of the sightings, as I say, was the chaffinch, the eater of chaff. This is a bird which you would think is too colourful and too cheerful for Scotland. This little red, brown and green patterned bird with a blue cap is a powerful singer. In Belgium they even hold singing contests for them – perhaps the inspiration for the Eurovision Song Contest. The birds apparently have to learn to sing from their parents and there are various regional dialects. That census question might be relevant after all. Next on the Scottish list came the sparrow, then the starling, followed by the blue tit and the blackbird. This was somewhat different from the UK rankings, where the sparrow came first, then the starling and the blackbird. The chaffinch came in fifth, so Scottish gardens are clearly a favourite feeding ground for the UK’s six million chaffinches. The chaffinch should not, of course, be confused with the brambling, a very similar bird. It is usually found in woods and farmland but has been coming into domestic gardens more often over the last two cold winters. It has a darker cap and larger white rump and its song is more abrupt than the chaffinch – more rapper than songster. Other unusual visitors have been the lesser redpoll and the waxwing. Over 12,000 Scottish schoolchildren from 380 schools took part in the Big Garden Birdwatch this year. And what was the most common bird seen in the playground? The blackbird – though, half of them are in fact brown, which may have confused some of the children. Altogether, 10 million birds were counted across Britain’s gardens that January weekend, by over 600,000 people. No fewer than 70 species of birds were reported. “We’re delighted that many people will have been rewarded with experiences of beautiful and unusual birds,” said Keith Morton of RSPB Scotland. “Our advice is to keep feeding garden birds, particularly during the cold weather."Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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