Category: noticing

Big Garden Birdwatch 2025

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A bird feeder stands in a small suburban garden. It is just about possible to see a starling pecking at a suet ball.

I missed last year’s Big Garden Birdwatch because I was in hospital.

The year before that I was in Avignon.

In 2023 I diligently sat in the conservatory for a whole hour and saw:

  • One unidentifiable Little Brown Job
  • One wood pigeon, which sat for a very long time on my neighbour’s chimney and never came into my garden, and could not therefore be counted.

I was therefore very pleased with this year’s much more respectable list:

  • Two wood pigeons
  • Five long-tailed tits
  • Two blackbirds
  • Four house sparrows
  • One robin
  • One great tit
  • One blue tit

And, in the “not a bird” category, a grey squirrel. Much more like it.

Not quite everyday nature

kathleenjowittLeave a comment
A partially knitted sock in stripes of white, red, brown, yellow and white/grey on a red plaid

I’ve embarked on one of last year’s Christmas presents, Everyday Nature by Andy Beer. This has a couple of paragraphs for each day, each examining a different natural phenomenon.

This being the week it’s been, I haven’t been able to act on much of it. New Year’s Day, for example, we were encouraged to go out for a nature walk. Not a hope. Today’s entry is on Venus: it’s cloudy.

But never mind. This morning on the bird feeders I saw: bluetits, a robin, a starling, and something that might have been a dunnock. (I am not very good at telling the difference between sparrows and dunnocks.) There were two grey squirrels chasing each other along the back fence. Yesterday there was a wren on the trellis.

This evening I returned to my goldfinch sock (self-striping yarn from West Yorkshire Spinners). Goldfinches were in the book for 2 January: I didn’t see any on Thursday (maybe I’ll get a nyger seed feeder to encourage them) but I can at least enjoy their sense of style.