Top Ten Garden Birds 2015

The last weekend in January 2015 was the weekend of the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch.  Twenty three households not only took part in this survey of garden birds but shared their results me.  

From the collation of these results, the top ten birds in terms of the number of gardens in which they were seen is: Robin, Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Blackbird, Great Tit, Dunnock , House Sparrow, Coal Tit, Collared Dove and Woodpigeon, the latter two birds replacing Greenfinch and Goldfinch in the top ten this year.   The previous four years the Chaffinch had been recorded in the most gardens. This year it was just pipped by the Robin which was recorded in all twenty three gardens. Chaffinch was recorded in twenty two.  Last year Robin was recorded in only three quarters of the gardens.  

This year there were thirty species of birds recorded.  Seven more than last year and more in line with the numbers recorded during the previous three years.  Goldcrest and Kestrel were recorded for the first time.

By far the largest total of birds seen was Chaffinch with two hundred and twenty-seven but this is a big reduction from the four hundred and forty-eight recorded in 2014.  There were some other marked changes from last year including , Greenfinch down to eleven from fifty-five, Goldfinch down to twelve from thirty-six, Coal Tit down to forty-four from one hundred and five. On the other had Collared Dove increased from fifteen to thirty-nine.
the information is interesting, too much should not be read into these small samples from five years.

If you would like a copy of the complete collated data for Arran for the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch, please get in touch.survey was over one weekend in the year. There is a garden bird watch that you can join that encourages people to record their garden bird sightings throughout the year, the British Trust for Ornithology Garden BirdWatch (GBW). To find out more about the BTO Garden BirdWatch visit the website http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/gbw