This is part of the Being Pamela series ‘A Turn Around the Garden’ where I write about adventures in my small Dublin garden. These are sometimes updates about the plants, shrubs and trees that are growing in the garden, as well as stories about the creatures that live there, with or without my help, what I’m learning about them and how we co-exist.
In this instalment of A Turn Around the Garden I want to take some time to reflect on my experience taking part in the BirdWatch Ireland Garden Bird Survey this past Winter. I find retrospectives on things like this really helpful both for sorting out what my thoughts are, and for reference when it comes to deciding whether to take part again next year. If it offers any insight to others considering taking part in this or something similar, that’s an added bonus!
What is the BirdWatch Ireland Garden Bird Survey?
BirdWatch Ireland are a conservation organisation here in Ireland. They carry out research, lead conservation projects, raise awareness and advocate for the protection and conservation of wild birds and their habitats. Every Winter they conduct a garden bird survey. The survey is a citizen science project that calls on people all over the country to monitor the birds that visit their gardens during the months of December, January and February. The results are submitted and the data is collated and used to keep track of how the various different species of Irish garden birds are doing.
Why Did I Take Part?
In the last couple of years, I’ve become very interested in citizen science projects. This started when my partner sent me a link to a Zooniverse project and grew when I realised I could log time spent on Zooniverse as volunteering hours at work, where we were allotted 40 hours of work time per year for volunteering. Citizen science appeals to me for a number of reasons.
It’s more hands-on than donating (though I did that too at the end of the survey), and I get that warm fuzzy feeling of having directly participated in a project that benefits a cause I care about.
It’s interesting and I love to learn by doing (I’m not sure if I’ve finished a single online on-demand course to date, despite having signed up for 7 million of them).
The economics of it really appeal to me - similar to crowd funding, or crowd sourcing - many hands make light work, and I love that.
The projects tends to be in areas I’m interested in - wildlife, the environment, literature, the arts, and history.
So naturally, when I saw the bird survey I thought Yes, I absolutely have to do that! For one I was back in Ireland after a few months spent living in Berlin, and my intense love of the Irish landscape and geography was at its peak (although I’m glad to say a few months on that this enthusiasm hasn’t waned). I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take part in a real world citizen science survey - one where I would get to participate hands on.
Plus I’ve always been obsessed with birds and this was a great excuse to finally buy some binoculars.
What was Involved?
I think it’s fair to say you can put varying amounts of time, effort and money into participating in this survey. You don’t even have to put a bird feeder up. You can simply monitor the birds that visit your garden. Naturally you will see more birds if you do put out feeders, and you’ll be providing the additional support of supplying your local birds with a much needed food source during the Winter months.
Feeding
Making sure your feeders don’t run empty is important. The last thing you want is for a bird to spend valuable energy flying to your garden, only for it to be a waste because the feeder is empty. Cleaning the feeders every 1-2 weeks is also key to avoid the spread of trichomoniases. For more on the warning signs of trichomoniasis and what to do if you see a sick bird in your garden, read BirdWatch Ireland’s page about it. I used hot soapy water and a drop of bleach to wash mine, giving them a good scrub with a long handled brush that could reach inside, and left them to dry in the porch.
In my case, the effort slowly escalated as more birds discovered the garden. Starting with 2 small feeders, I found that I was refilling them at least every day. I chose to increase the number of feeders to reduce that overhead to every couple of days. The supply-demand finally reached a plateau at 5 feeders of varying sizes. I invested in a couple of extra feeders and swapped these out for cleaning, which made it easier weeks that I was busy.
I was shocked to see that the neighbourhood cats were quick on the uptake that birds were congregating in the garden. Not only did their appearance endanger the birds but it drove our dog wild. I did my best to put the feeders up high, but next year I will try to get them even higher and more secure.
The types of food I put out were sunflower hearts (by far the most popular), nyjer seed (because I heard they attracted goldfinches) and fat balls. The birds in my garden all seemed to prefer the sunflower seeds to anything else, which is good news because nyjer seed is more expensive and needs a specific type of feeder. The fat balls were popular with the small birds and magpies but they also partook of the sunflower seeds.
Cost
Again, this is up to personal circumstances. I ended spending a significant enough amount. I look at the feeders as investments as I can use them again next year. The bird food itself I would limit to sunflower seeds and fat balls next time.
The best value sunflower seed I found was on petstop.ie and it costs €51 for a 12.5kg bag. I was refilling my feeders every 2-3 days and at a rough estimate I would say a bag lasted about a month. I bought 3 boxes of fat balls for €15 each. Then there’s the cost of the feeders themselves which ranged between €15 and €25 each.
Tracking things like that precisely is not my strong point but I would estimate - ESTIMATE - that it cost me, all in all, about €300. This is not including the cost of the binoculars obviously. Those were more of an indulgence than a necessity. I did increase the number of feeders when the number of birds increased, but I wasn’t sure what else to do given the advice not to leave feeders empty. I really didn’t want any little feathered friends left unrewarded for a jaunt to our garden. I place most of the blame for this cost on the absurdly numerous goldfinch, whose numbers reached as high as 26 at one time!
Time Investment
I spent a few hours each week on this between refilling and cleaning feeders, and the actual bird watching. The time investment can be quite flexible for this survey. BirdWatch Ireland state on their website that even if you only have time to count a few birds as you look out the window while washing your dishes, that’s perfectly fine.
Keeping an Eye out for Sick Birds (Trichomoniasis)
One thing to be aware of is the need to keep watch for sick birds. The BirdWatch Ireland page on this explains what to look out for and what to do if you do see a sick bird. I’m sorry to say that I did see sick birds in my garden, and had to take in all of the feeders (as advised by BirdWatch Ireland) for the last three weeks of the survey. Sadly it was patently obvious when I saw the bird that it wasn’t well. It was very slow to fly away when approached, much more so than the other birds who immediately scattered to higher perches nearby. Its feathers were all puffed up and ragged (trying to keep itself warm). It was heartbreaking, but there isn’t anything that can be done for them, and unfortunately there has been an increase in the disease in recent years. The responsible thing to do is to take in the feeders and give them a really good wash to prevent the spread to other birds.
Water in Cold Temperatures
With the increase in birds in the garden, I also made sure to put out water during periods of low temperatures. I saw plenty of birds making use of it so it’s worth while doing. I noticed too that the water quickly froze and refreshing it throughout the day or adding some warm water to keep it liquid for longer was helpful.
The Actual Birdwatching
The core part of this was of course the surveying itself. I decided at the beginning of the survey, to invest in a pair of binoculars and it really made the whole experience so much more interesting. It was critical to being able to identify the birds, because there were many that I wasn’t familiar with up close. We have a big sycamore at the end of the garden too and without the binoculars it was difficult to see the birds clearly enough to identify them, as they were often up high in the tree. It was quite a thrill to realise towards the end of the three months that I no longer needed the binoculars to identify most of the birds. I had learned to recognise them by a combination of colour, size, movement and song.
I read a brilliant guide to binoculars for beginner bird watchers, which I now cannot for the life of me find, but thank you - whoever you are! In the end I bought a pair of Celestron Nature DX binoculars that were supposed to be good for people who wear glasses (and they lived up to the hype, they’re great). They were about €200 and considering the price that binoculars go up to, and how good these are, I consider them really good value for money. Absolutely not necessary to participate in the survey, but I adore birds and have considered taking up birdwatching many times. Plus being able to see the birds in detail is so useful from an artist point of view.
This aspect of the survey was just so much fun. The pure joy I felt when I saw a little fluttering in the hedge, only to discover that it was a gold crest. It was just magical. I had so much fun quickly jotting sketches and then identifying birds using either BirdWatch Ireland’s garden bird guide or the RSPB bird identifier. I found the latter more successful because it asked questions about the birds behaviour and helped to filter down the options, versus the simple list that BirdWatch Ireland have.
The idea is to make a note of the quantity of a particular type of bird at any one time. Not a running total. Then start fresh the following week. Below is a snapshot of the highest quantities of each bird I saw over the course of the whole survey. So what this means is that yes, there were 26 goldfinches in the garden at the same time! 15 Greenfinches, 6 Chaffinches, and so on. I’ve noted some of the highlights about each group too.
I was really fortunate to be given a camera trap as a gift at Christmas, which was such a perfect gift for me. The video at the start of this post is one of my favourites because it captures the feisty little blackcap that became a regular in the garden.
Submitting Results
This part was really easy. There’s an online form, where you can add your numbers each week and it saves your progress, then you can submit it at the end. Or you can just fill the whole thing out at the end. I kept track of my numbers in a notebook throughout the survey and then submitted everything in one go at the end. You can also email them your numbers, or print out the physical sheet, fill it out and post it back to them. So the process is friendly to folks with a preference for analog or digital.
Consensus
Overall, I think it was definitely worth the money and effort. I will try to reduce cost next year. I want to investigate natural feeding like Winter fruiting shrubs such as Holly and Rowan. I’ll get a better system in place for cleaning and try to get a pulley system so that I can put the feeders up higher, further out of reach of cats. But the effort is just absolutely worth the transformation of our usually bleak Winter garden into a hub for 20 different species of bird. The joy of seeing a flock of 26 goldfinches, mating pairs of blackcaps and gold crests, the bobbing tails of long-tailed tits, and the two gorgeous Yellow Siskins who showed up late to the party the week after the survey finished!
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