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BirdWatch Ireland's most popular survey starts on Monday, November 29th.
Best gardens
Large rural gardens continued to attract the most species, with a top total of 42 species from a
rural Dublin garden. Not unsurprisingly, given the direction of bird movements from the continent,
all the east coast counties from Louth to Wexford figured strongly in the bird diversity listing,
with 18 of the top 25 gardens from this region, recording between 33 and 42 species.
Some losers
The remarkably harsh winter of 2009/10 followed on the heels of another cold one, 2008/09, and the
net effect was a drop in numbers of some of our garden bird populations. This was most noticeable with
the more specialised feeders, which typically rely on relatively soft ground conditions to forage.
In terms of ranking, Wren fell out of the top ten, down four places to 12. Other mainly insectivorous
species were similarly challenged with Long-tailed Tit down eight places to 27 and Goldcrest, our smallest bird,
dropping six places to 30.
Small birds in particular lose a high proportion of their body weight overnight and need to feed constantly
during short winter days, just to survive. The colder the conditions, the more energy and food they require,
just to maintain body weight and
January 2010: mass movement of birds
Members of the public responded in kind to the harshest conditions in decades, with record numbers of people
phoning, calling and e-mailing the BirdWatch Ireland offices to enquire about 'strange' birds descending
on their gardens and wondering how they could help the bird populations in these conditions.
Many people began putting out food for birds for the first time and taking part in the survey. The message
is that providing food and planting for birds makes an important if not vital contribution to the winter
survival of 'our' garden birds. Of course, many of the strange or unusual visitors were in fact visitors
from an even colder mainland
Europe, particularly members of the thrush family, which often arriving depleted and exhausted
as they moved ahead of the harshest conditions. Many of these migrants never made it to the sanctuary
of well-stocked gardens, but those that did were literally handed a lifeline.
Two notable hard-weather movers were Song Thrush, in seventh position, up six places and recorded
in nearly 90% of gardens, and Starling, a regular winter immigrant from Russia, in at eighth position, up from 12.
Fieldfares, normally scarce in gardens, were recorded in
nearly 50% of gardens, and were at 23, their first ever
showing in the top 30.
Less typical garden birds included Snipe, a wader desperate, no doubt, for soft ground to probe for insect
prey. It reached 37th position and was present in over 7% of gardens.
Other waders included Woodcock, recorded from ten gardens, and Lapwing, a widespread and regular hard-weather
mover, recorded in 19 gardens.
Edited from Oran O'Sullivan's report on the results of last winter's survey
If you don't have Acrobat Reader, you can download it here:
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