Saturday 24 January 2009

BGBW

A bit like MGMT but not quite, the big garden birdwatch always passed me by with little consequence, chiefly because i have never had the privilege of my own garden before, mainly living in dumps in york and lattely a terrace with a yard which espite my bird table only ever managed a single tawny owl a couple of times a winter as its singing post. Now like MGMT im liking it a lot. My garden has been a little bereft of birds as i set up home but now with a regularly restocked feeding table and lots of feeders the birds are arriving. My hour today was highly enjoyable. I dont think ive stopped and watched the feeders here for an hour straight before but I noticed the pasty Blue Tit was subordinate to the more brightly coloured other 2 and that I have 3 male Great Tits visiting all varying in their mantle colour with a grey backed, green backed and an almost brown backed individual. My highlights were a couple of parties of Long-tailed Tits who visited my giant fat block in the skittish and always delightful way they do. Better than that was the new garden tick in the Barn Owl which was quartering the field behind and came over the hedge banking before heading back on to the field. It just shows that birds can give simple pleasures. Having said that a Green-winged Teal is at North Cave and if it hadnt been for my revision im sure i'd have gone to see that today as its at no10 in my ten to see birds according to Bubo. A little worrying that 6/10 birds are vagrants in that now. Only stuff like Stone Curlew, Storm Petrel and Temminck's Stint remain of the regular british birds to see now. Anyway, heres hoping your garden birdwatch went well.

2 comments:

Michael Flowers said...

Would love to have a Barn Owl on my garden list. Have to put up with a Tawny on mine, but never appears during the BGBW.

Thanks for your post...Wonder who it was then?

Hope you're getting enough sleep these days. May see you at Tophill soon, as you seem to be there a lot. Cheers

James said...

Apart from this weekend due to exams its every weekend as part of a work placement thing for uni. Easy way to get credit for a module. Probably see you up there soon.

How birds and brains become mutually exclusive

Record, share and compare with BUBO Listing at www.bubo.org