Saturday 26 January 2008

The Yearly Sparrow Exodus

Well, here it comes again, The Big Garden Bird Watch organized by the RSPB and not an effing bird to be seen!
A month ago my tiny garden was heaving with birds & 30 sparrows at a time would come to my bird feeders, so tame that I could easily walk amongst them without them panicking. 
For some mysterious reason, probably only known to the birds themselves or to experts who devote all their time to studying birds, all the bird population does a flit just before the Big Garden Bird Watch. 
I suppose we are lucky to get birds to visit at all, living in the middle of a city. Our garden is less than 50ft long & only half as wide. We have a few high dense shrubs that the sparrows like to hide in, which is a good thing as we have had several visits from a sparrow hawk. We have patio, no lawns and lots of plants growing in tubs as well as a couple of tiny ponds.
Next door has half a dozen cats of assorted colours but the bird feeders are high up, away from moggy reach, so casualties are few and I don't ever put seed on the ground. I might have had more luck with a moggy watch!
So why do birds decide to leave the city in January, just before the Bird Watch? Maybe some one out there knows the reason.

9 comments:

Expat mum said...

I've just watched a massive "V" of Camadian Geese probably heading for Jamaica. I swear I could hear the front one saying, "Bloody hell, I thought Canada was cold!"

Expat mum said...

That would be "Canadian" geese! Sorry!

Maggie May said...

Aren't they lucky, just whizzing off to a hot climate whenever they want? No booking & no packing!

Maggie May said...

Aren't they lucky, just whizzing off to a hot climate whenever they want? No booking & no packing!

Maggie May said...

Sorry, did not mean to repeat myself! I don't know how to delete & I know that we are talking about geese not parrots!

Expat mum said...

Obviously both of us were multi-tasking and not paying enough attention!!

softinthehead said...

Hi Maggie May thanks for visiting my blog. I am enjoying yours, it's silly stuff of life that makes the world go round.

the mother of this lot said...

Thanks for visiting! No idea why the birds leave - maybe they don't like Bill Oddie?

Maggie May said...

Thanks softinthehead & motherofthislot for visiting today .All this blogging is time consuming & compulsive stuff, isn't it? Wish there were more hours in the day!
Expatmum, yes, I think multitasking is getting too much for me.