Big Garden Birdwatch in Britain results

This video from Britain is called RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2015.

From the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in Britain:

The results are in and over half a million of you took part to count more than 8.5 million birds.

With more than 585,000 pairs of eyes spending an hour counting birds over the Big Garden Birdwatch weekend the results showed an increase in most of the top 20 birds compared with 2014 results.

However the picture is more complicated when looked at in detail. Our finches; chaffinch, goldfinch and greenfinch were all down on last year. This is likely to be because of a good seed crop following a productive summer out in the countryside taking these birds away from our gardens.

So, there aren’t any new alarm bells ringing about finches, but this does continue a long running decline in greenfinch numbers of 53 percent since 1979. This long term drop is likely due to Trichomonosis a disease which can be contracted at garden feeding stations – so it’s good to clean them every now and then.

We also had fewer of our charismatic winter migrants like redwing and waxwing this year, most likely because conditions were good on the continent over winter and they were quite happy to stay there.

Real winners included the wren which was reported double the number of times compared to last year. Blackbird also rose to claim the number three spot this year, with sightings in more than 90 percent of UK gardens. The much loved robin also did well with sightings of the red-breast at their highest level per garden since 2011. These birds will come into gardens during cold conditions and keep coming back if they find a reliable source.

Results

To see the full results, check out our new infographic.