Friends of Canons Park

RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch 2008

The RSPB has been running the Garden Bird watch for several years and the numbers participating are growing each year. The number of entries to the RSPB website last year exceeded 450,000, and the information is becoming statistically important.

The RSPB asks its members to watch their garden for 1 hour on either the 26th or 27^th January 2008 and make a note of the maximum number of each of the birds they see. This year they also suggested that people might record what they see in their local parks. The information should then be submitted to the RSPB - this can be done in a number of ways, including via their website www.rspb.org.uk. 

In addition, the Friends of Canons Park, in conjunction with the RSPB Mill Hill group, set up a watch point in the Park on Sunday 27th January. There were guided bird-spotting walks during the morning and species counts were taken for the RSPB survey.

Here is a report on what happened last year:

In conjunction with the RSPB Mill Hill group, the Friends set up a watch point in the Park, and to make sure there was something to look at on the 28^th, put up a selection of seed, peanut and fat feeders, a few day before the weekend, in the trees just inside the new Donnefield Ave gates. This worked very well and the Safer Neighbourhood Team in the Lodge told me they had been watching the antics of the birds all that week.

We set up a gazebo in case of rain, but enjoyed a nice sunny day instead. We began to record what we saw, and took groups of people around the park to see what else we could find. On this occasion we did not go round to the basin on Canons Drive, as we usually do, because the intent was to record the birds in the park.

We had a good day and recorded 27 species including sparrowhawk (2^nd week running), great spotted woodpecker and a green woodpecker was heard calling.

Naturally the ring-necked parakeets put on a tour de force for us with a maximum count of 13 on the day. (On Thursday 8^th January, the morning of the heavy snowfall, we recorded 33 in the big sycamore by the Donnefield Ave gate.)

We found a goldcrest by the Bothy and the redwings that we have missed on previous walks. We saw all three doves, collared, stock and wood pigeon and four different gulls overhead, herring, lesser black-back, common and black-headed the one seen most often in the park. There was a constant flow of chaffinch, greenfinch and goldfinch around the seed feeders along with great and blue tits, and amongst them, every now and then, was a real treat, the coal tit, that lives in the conifers that border the railway line. The coal tit is not rare, just hard to see. It comes to the seed feeder and is gone again so quickly, that unless you happen to be looking in the right direction at the right moment, you will miss it.

We’ll be out again next year to add our tally to the National Survey.

Robin Morden

Thursday, 15 February 2007