Small Garden, Big Birdwatch
We live in a third floor flat so we don’t really have a garden in the true sense of the word. But we do have a communal back yard that we can overlook from one of our living room windows. At first glance it certainly does not look like a wildlife haven. A concrete square with brick walls on three sides, but it does have a good growth of ivy which has a sycamore tree growing through it. These two features do attract a few birds and this is helped greatly by the garden just beyond having three bird feeders which pull in a good few birds. Ruth was looking out of the window early on and called excitedly that she had found a male Blackcap in the ivy! Wow! A rarity for our yard and we immediately embarked on our one hour long Big Garden Birdwatch. How could we not? We did not want our Blackcap not to count! Only draw back was we weren’t ready, we had planned to sit comfortably with a steaming mug of tea after our breakfast and log all the birds that used our ivy and lone tree. So breakfast was put on hold but we did take the risk of missing something by making that cup of tea. Nothing much happening at first, in fact once the Blackcap moved on nothing at all for some time! But we kept our vigil and were rewarded with a Robin hopping around on the concrete yard. Then a real flurry of activity as two male Blackbirds landed in the tree and were quickly followed by a pair of Collared Doves. The doves were in the mood for love and no sooner had they landed on the wall they were mating! Amazing what you can see from the window! Two Blue Tits moved through en route to the feeders over the wall. A real surprise was a pair of Pied Wagtails which dropped in all too briefly, a species we rarely see here. All too soon our hour was up, it is amazing how quickly time passes even when watching the common birds of our small yard. What a great way to spend an hour so thank you RSPB for allowing us to have so much enjoyment, when was the last time we sat and watched garden birds for an hour? It was totally relaxing and we felt good that we taken part in something really worth while doing our bit for citizen science. Pity it is only once a year!
Later in the day we had a sighting that we could not have counted for our Big Garden Birdwatch as you can only count bird perched in your garden and not flying over. Alarm calls from the roof top Herring Gulls signalled something was up, we scanned the sky and there flapping hard was a Peregrine Falcon! This most majestic raptor was working hard to make head way and as we focused the binoculars we could see why. The falcon was clutching a feral pigeon in its massive talons. The Peregrine was taking the bacon, well pigeon, home, and heading for the cliffs of the Great Orme. Its flight path took it straight over our building, brilliant stuff!