Garden bird count.

Birds bring so much joy to our lives here in rural Roscommon and we feed them all year around in our garden as recommended by RSPB. You can find more information about that in this link.

One of our very first posts on this blog from January 2015, was written about how to increase your number of garden birds and it still remains popular today. You can find it here.

We are delighted that the time has now come for the yearly garden bird survey conducted by Bird Watch Ireland. If you live in Ireland and wish to take part, register online and start counting your garden birds from this week, beginning Monday the 3^rd of December.  Counts can be submitted once a week beginning on Sunday the 9^th of Dec. Detailed information on how to count the birds and a registration page can be found on Bird Watch Ireland’s home page.

It is important that as many as possible take part in the survey and it is great fun to take a closer look at all the different birds visiting the garden over the winter months.

Unfortunately the birds fly away if we get to close with the camera so this time you will have to put up with much less than perfect picture quality. But you can imagine the feeders being full of birds and the tree a resting place for as many as 50-60 birds at a time.

There is also an equivalent to this count if you live in the UK set up by the RSPB. You can find information about this here. We imagine that there are many more counts like this around the world, just do a search for your area or country.

When walking around the garden recently we spotted the tiny wren’s nest on our arched hawthorn tree across the stream. We did see the young wrens earlier in the year, but we could not figure out where the nest was hidden, until now.

Perhaps the wrens will be back next year to raise another brood safely hidden in the foliage above the fast flowing stream. We live in hope.