Big Garden Birdwatch

The Big Garden Birdwatch is a survey the RSPB carries out every year, encouraging citizen science to better understand the patterns in birdlife we find in our gardens. It is a very valuable survey that has helped indicate declines in birds such as greenfinches, starlings and house sparrows which have then been subject to further study. But the best thing about the survey is it is an excuse to just sit and admire the wildlife in your garden (not that an excuse should ever be needed to do that!).

The view I had for the count

Counting the birds through my living room window

Now that I am living in the sub-Antarctic for 18 months I was initially missing the possibility of counting all those goldfinches and blue tits in my garden back home. But then my friend, Mel Broadhurst, whom I worked with in Alderney, got in touch to ask me to do the Big Garden Birdwatch here on Bird Island – I certainly didn’t need asking twice!

King penguins are moulting in our garden at this time of year

So on the 30^th January I spent an hour watching the birds in our ‘front garden’, noting the number of each species in attendance. The results are taken from when the peak number of any species is recorded during the hour, therefore in my front garden I counted:

·         14 snowy sheathbill

·         39 brown skua

·         14 northern giant petrel

·         28 king penguin

·         1 gentoo penguin

·         1 kelp gull

·         2 antarctic tern

·         2 South Georgia pipit

·         1 South Georgia pintail

A snowy sheathbill feeding around the fur seals

Brown skuas are our most frequent garden bird, feeding on seal carrion

A northern giant petrel relaxing in the garden with a skua feeding behind

Doing a survey like this makes me realize again how surreal and amazing it is to be able to say there are penguins in my front garden! Filling out the results for submission to the RSPB was also interesting; describing the ‘garden’ as more than 5km away from farmland is an unusual moniker for BI and unfortunately there were no options for fur seal carrion in the feeding section. But still, it was brilliant to do the survey in such an unusual location and really brought a slice of the UK to my wildlife adventure in the sub-Antarctic.

Some king penguins walking through the garden past the resident skuas

Meanwhile in Alderney there were 1 dunnock, 1 blue tit and 3 blackbirds recorded in a local garden whilst the team taking part also made bird boxes. The high winds kept numbers low but all results from these surveys are very valuable and I do miss seeing our local UK birds! Well done to everyone that took part with the Alderney Wildlife Trust, let's do it again next year! :)