The UK Garden Birdwatch 2022.

Sunday 30th January 2022.

A pair of Blue Tits came down to feed on my garden feeder.

According to the RSPB, we have lost 38 million birds in the UK over the past 20 years and over 900 million in Europe alone! Global Warming, pollution, intensive farming and shooting are some of the reasons why we have lost so much and all caused by HUMANS! We have been destroying our planet at an alarming rate in the past 100 years and if Coronavirus has taught us anything, we could be next on the destruction list?

House Sparrows, which have suffered a 30% decline over the past 40 years, are doing well around my garden.

The RSPB had over 1 million people putting in their time to record what was within their own gardens last year and so this year, I would not be surprised to see if that record is broken. I, personally, try to get involved every year and there was a surprise in store for me. Today’s temperature was up to 8 degrees between the hours of 11.45am to 12.45pm as I spent an hour in the back garden, enjoying the warm sunshine. I had cleaned the Sunflower heart feeder the night before and put the feeder out this morning, all set for today.

A pair of House Sparrows enjoying the sunflower hearts.

Though the birds were somewhat a bit quiet at time, probably due to one of my neighbours working in their garden or a cat passing by the back of my garden. Still, there were a few birds, notably the House Sparrows and Blue Tits that enjoyed my feeder. 

The following birds were recorded in and over the garden this morning:

• 8 House Sparrow
• 1 Wood Pigeon
• 2 Blackbird
• 2 Blue Tit
• 1 Starling
• 1 Greenfinch
• 1 Goldfinch
• 1 Collared Dove
• 4 Herring Gull
• 1 Black-headed Gull

I saw my first butterfly of the year, a Red Admiral, that was seen flying firstly over my neighbours garden and perched on their guttering to rest in the sunshine. It was later seen flying over my garden and then off to the neighbouring gardens to the south. An Early Bumblebee put in a brief appearance in my garden for all of 10 seconds until flying off into neighbouring gardens. When I was a youngster, none of these insects would have been seen till around April, which goes to show how Global Warming has changed our climate. 

The Red Admiral butterfly basking in the morning sunshine on my neighbours guttering.

Low and behold, the Yellow-browed Warbler at Hook-with-Warsash showed well this morning in the bright, near windless, sunshine! Fume! The windy conditions most certainly put the bird off yesterday. Off Church Norton this morning, a Red-necked Grebe, 2 Long-tailed Ducks, 2 Goosanders, 12 Slavonian Grebes were swimming on the calm sea and fly-by Red-throated Divers and Gannets! Birding pal, Geoff Farwell texted me to say that yesterday, he was birding at the Nether Wallop / Broughton area today in north Hampshire. He saw the following birds: Red Kite, Peregrine, 5 Buzzards, 80 Lapwing, 96 Stock Dove, 2,000+ Wood Pigeon, 2 Raven, 730 Black-headed Gulls, 160 Fieldfare, 30 Redwing, 300 Starling and 2 Stonechat. 

I found this Beautiful Plume moth outside the kitchen window.