Notes on Nature TV 7: Big Garden Birdwatch, identifying finches, wildlife garden tip and your photos

[Music] welcome to notes on nature tv i'm jamie and i'm jenny coming up in this episode we've got broadcaster and naturalist mike dilger and scala radio presenter and bird enthusiast simon mayo talking to us about big garden birdwatch but my favorite bird jamie has to be the bullfinch and it's a bird i always hear before i see it's got a beaut beautiful and once you learn that call you know it's coming in i love the fact that they're so common and yet they have the greatest song of all i mean i i know there are other songbirds that can probably be more show-offy but i love the black bird probably more than any other miranda kristofnikov tv broadcaster and rspb president has got the latest news from her kestrel cam so we've got the male kestrel at the back of the nest box and the female has just flown in now i haven't seen the two of them in the nest box together for about two or three weeks so this is really exciting now our gardens might be looking a bit soggy and bleak at the moment but there are still things we can do outside at this time of year to help nature our wildlife gardening expert adrian thomas has a tip for us you'll often hear me going on about the importance of a log pile for wildlife which is great when you've got something like this which i can see is covered in springtails and wood lice and millipedes but what if you don't have logs and luke introduces us to a bird that sometimes visits gardens the grey whitetail admittedly it is a fairly scarce visitor but they do turn up fairly frequently across the whole of the uk and it's a bird that we often get told about because it is quite an unusual one first let's have a look in the digital mailbag at some of the photos you've sent in first up we've got this fantastic great tip from michael batley i don't have any snow at the moment and haven't had all month so i'm quite jealous of that alone it's a lovely shot isn't it and actually i think the great is sheltering there from the elements in the in that handle of a fork or a spade or something it's a it's a beautiful shot and these are birds that we are going to be hearing quite a bit from i think over the next couple of months because they are one of the early nesters aren't they yeah you're right i've actually started hearing quite a few birds piping up recently which is lovely a kind of sign of spring being around the corner and great tits and we often say they sound like they're saying teacher teacher teacher or you can also compare it with a bit of a um i suppose a squeaky gate that someone is annoying you by swinging back and forth yeah that's right my dad always said it sounds like a squeaky wheelbarrow so that's definitely one to look out for um a an easily recognizable bird with it's really bold yellow front with a black strap going down the midline that black and white head what's the next picture we've got we've got a fantastic kingfisher by katie close and now katie is trumping us all here because this actually visited her garden pond so katie i very much hope this kingfisher returns for your big garden bird watch now i think that this kingfisher i'm just having a close look at that beak because i think that's a male so i think we say that the male has got an all black beak and from memory uh the female has a red mark on her lower the lower part of her beak so that's a really lovely shot they're very bright colors and the next one is a starling and what we didn't say about the great tit earlier was that the great tip was number seven in last week's last year's big gun burbot's top ten the starling this one uh photographed by jeff douglas was number two in last year's big garden birdwatch top ten so they are seen in many many gardens but they're not doing particularly well these these birds are they no they're not and the weird thing about it is we don't know why as i understand it they're doing quite well when it comes to nesting and producing young but then somewhere along the line their numbers are declining and they're sort of disappearing perhaps in their wintering sites so it's really valuable to be getting this data and from this clip you can see this starting is just getting its kind of real iridescent shine to it um which you might notice at the moment they're turning from that kind of dull um speckly brown color to that lovely glossy breeding plumage and that one's got its eye on some blackberries um i get plenty in the garden here and they are drawn in by mealworms they cannot resist a mealworm so um that's a tip for keeping them going through the winter months what's the next photo now this next one jamie is from elise jones and it's fantastic because just look at the paleness of one of these birds i've never seen one like that myself i don't know if you have i have i've seen uh well i've seen that sort of a it might have been a lucid one or an albino one quite a long time ago but this shot is just incredible because you can really see that comparison and we've talked before on notes on nature tv about lucistic birds and how unlike an albino they don't have that pink eye and this one you can see has a the eye is pale but it's not it's not completely pink so this isn't an albino but and the contrast with the with the normally colored red kite is quite striking isn't it yeah i love that photo that's that's that's the best one i've seen all year that's fantastic it's beautiful so thank you elise thank you so much for sending that one in we really enjoy this one um and we've got one last one here which is another really striking shot um and i had to include this one um it's just stunning isn't it the the the contrast of those colors and the colors in this in this robin photo remind me about the kingfisher yeah you're right yeah i mean who doesn't love a robin my favorite robin facts ever is um that when they follow you around the garden like there's some sort of pet um and following you particularly when you're doing some digging i had one in the allotment the other day was really really close um obviously whenever i tried to get a photo of it it flew off but robins have evolved in the forests of europe they see us very much like they would do a deer or a wild boar grubbing up the earth and providing access to all those tasty worms so they basically just see us as an upright wild boar don't they that's fantastic i love that the idea of everyone just scrubbing around and the robin just thinks yeah some sort of wild boar there i don't know about that but yeah um what's also really cool about robin's i love i mean you can get really attached to them because often the one that you're seeing in your garden will be the same individual because they're so territorial that they're not going to let another robin in their patch so if you're seeing one all the time it's probably the same little chap or chapes and we do kind of think of them as our robins don't they that's that's our robin in the garden yeah it's it's just a lovely familiar burden thank you joe and thank you all for sending in those photos um we had a tremendous response we asked in notes on nature the uh weekly email we send out uh the other day if people would like to send their photos into us and we had hundreds sent in and they are a joy to see if you would like to send us anything for notes on nature tv you can send it to our new email address if you've got a wildlife photo or a video of some nature that you'd like us to feature our email address is notes on nature at rspb.org dot uk coming up miranda krestoflikov introduces us to a pair of kestrels generally the female's been using it overnight the male's been coming in just very briefly and then leaving so really nice to see the two of them together oh you can see that she's calling unfortunately we haven't have any we don't have any audio here um but you can see her beat opening and she's just calling to him which is lovely and the fabulous mike dilljet enthuses about garden birds i would think number one species in my garden is the goldfinch it's a really easy bird to identify it's got that target the red white and black face but also when you see it coming in it's got that lovely gold that flash of gold now here's another bird that often visits gardens and i often see one in my own garden the grey wagtail hello and in this species spotlight we are taking a closer look at the grey wagtail now this is a wonderful species that could occur in gardens in winter admittedly it is a fairly scarce visitor but they do turn up fairly frequently across the whole of the uk and it's a bird that we often get told about because it is quite an unusual one now it's also a species that causes a few identification issues so i thought i would initially clear that up now gray white tails are indeed quite gray but they're also extremely yellow as you can see in this clip here and so they are gray above but very yellow below um but they do have an extremely long tail as well which is always wagging which is always a feature of any whitetail now the confusion species is the yellow wagtail and as we can see here it is much more yellow females are green yellow above and yellow below but males are very very yellow and it's actually yellow whitetails are often confused with the gray whitetails now to help further yellow whitetails are actually only summer visitors so currently in the uk there wouldn't be any yellow whitetails around except actually just to confuse things there is one called an eastern yellow whitetail currently in nike but that is one single bird and they are mega mega rare so not one to worry about so just adds to confusion but yellow whitetails like i say are summer visitors and they'll be arriving in april and leaving again in about september so this time of year you're only really likely to see the grey wagtail now of course there is a third species of bike tail in britain the pied wagtail um but i suspect we're much more familiar with this bird we see it around our town centers an awful lot maybe even in your garden if you're lucky too but they are as the name suggests very black and white so that's the pied white tail so grey wagtails like i say sometimes visit gardens um but it is only in winter and why is that well this is a river species it's a bird that spends most of its life on rivers but in the wintertime rivers become swollen and flooded and that means food is hard to find so gardens become a bit of a bit of a last resort when they can't feed on rivers anymore they head to our gardens and around our houses to find some food so a little bit of a refuge uh whilst uh times are tough due in the winter now keep an eye over the next few months because it'll be march or april when they'll be heading back to their rivers so do keep an eye out over the big garden bird watch of course um but generally for the next few months because if you do spot one trust me it will be a real treat so good luck so can you attract grey whitetails to your garden well it's a good question they're not something you can easily draw in by putting out bird feeds what they do seem to like though is ponds and i've had the experience and our wildlife gardener um adrian thomas has also had this where soon after you put a pond in the grey water will pop in to investigate which is interesting because we see them mostly as birds of um kind of fast flowing upland streams uh the same kind of habitat where you find interesting other um waterside um and almost a classic buzz up the dipper i'm thinking of but grey wagtails will come into gardens and and certainly in our suburban garden they they do pop in and there's been one um yesterday hopping around the lawn all day have you ever encountered one of these jenny ah i wish no we've um we get another type of wagtail which i have to say is no less stunning and that's the pied worker tale often seen scuttling along um car parks and playgrounds um yeah they're lovely um to watch and we're really hoping that the pair that live around us might nest with spring oh fingers crossed you have to let us know come come back on notes on htv and give us an update um with that are we talking about the great tip call early on which is easily remembered but whitetail as well um chizik is is the noise they make they they all come from chizik apparently um so talking of garden birds um the rspb's big garden bird watch is coming up very soon and you can join in from friday the 29th to sunday the 31st of january i caught up with scala radio's simon mayer who is a big fan of birds to have a chat about it simon welcome hello um what are your favorite garden birds i'm not sure that the birds that i'm going to say are going to count as garden birds because in fact i know in fact i know they don't and they're not here yet but all the time that i spend out uh in the garden enjoying the time there i have a tiny garden you know it's like it's like this big um what all all it makes me do is make me yearn for the time when the swifts are back so that's so that so that's what they all make me think because the swifts and then the swallows they just uh are birds that are they i mean they have a very unusual cry but every time they appear they make they make me feel very joyful so um i'm gonna my most boring answer would be blackbird because i love the fact that they're so common and yet they have the greatest song of all i mean i i know there are other songbirds that can probably be more show-offy but i love the blackbird probably more than any other but i just it just all of the time i'm spending out there i'm waiting for the swifts and maybe i'll look up and see if i want to sneak down slightly earlier though it seems a long way off at the moment it does and actually that's a brilliant answer because you're given two there one which we can look forward to seeing right now and one that we can we can plan and hope for in the future and and obviously now is a cracking time for people to get up there swift's nest boxes as well so yes i've got one i have one i have one up there and it's been studiously ignored all switched every single year but i'm hopeful that this year maybe the the trick supposedly is to play the sound of a swift but um i i don't know how easy that is to do but you can have a recording that blasts out the the screaming um so i know some people sort of poise themselves by their window when they see a swift flying over they press the button and desperately try and call it down but fingers crossed this will be the year i don't think i'll be i don't think i'll be doing that but i have hope that that works and what are you most looking forward to about this year's big garden bird watch well i subscribe to the simon barnes theory here uh simon who's a a great sports writer but a great lover of nature and a great birder as well and he wrote i think on the front cover of his book how to be a bad bird watcher and he ju and i think he wrote i think it just says at the bottom the strap line is to the greater glory of life or something like that words to that effect and i think that's what it's the i think that's what they're there for it's just the fact that they're there if i don't know which bird they are it kind of annoys me but also it doesn't matter because just sitting there uh wrapped up very well um is a joyful thing there are very few things that we're allowed to do that bring us joy um at the moment so this is something to look forward to because i think you can just sit quietly study watch learn be happy that's it brilliant stuff from simon mayo there i'm a scala listener myself actually and i have to say classical music in the background while you're doing your big garden bird watch that just sounds like the perfect soundtrack perfect morning i love a black bird too actually and i have a fact view here jamie why is a black bird called a black bird well i'm going to give you the obvious answer is it because the male is black well yes but then a crow is also a black bird so it's actually because the word bird used to refer just to small birds so the ones that we kind of refer to as a passerine now um to define it against anything sort of larger so yeah it wasn't the sort of general term that it is today so the word blackbird would have been a description of both its colour and its relatively small size that's incredible thank you so much that's our factor fact of the episode that one um that's absolutely cracking thank you very much for that and we'll have more on big garden birdwatch later with mike dilger now a couple of weeks ago tv broadcaster and rspb president miranda krestoflikov introduced us to the kestrels that visit her kestrel box last time we got to see the male bird well now he's been joined by the female so we've got the male kestrel at the back of the nest box and the female has just flown in now um i haven't seen the two of them in the nest box together for about two or three weeks so this is really exciting um generally the female's been using it overnight the male's been coming in just very briefly and then leaving so really nice to see the two of them together oh you can see that she's calling unfortunately we haven't have any we don't have any audio here um but you can see her beak opening and she's just calling to him which is lovely [Music] i think he's calling back as well so they're just establishing that pair bond that they've had probably over the last year so if i went out my front door now i'd be able to hear them calling but i wouldn't understand necessarily where they were i wouldn't even know probably because it's dark now that they're actually in the nest box together but having this monitor in our kitchen gives us a really clear view of exactly what's happening and the behavior that's going on inside neither bird seems to bring in any prey to the box at the moment so during the day they're out hunting and feeding out around and about where we live and at night they just can't seem to come in and use the box for shelter presumably a bit of warmth at this time of year and uh just a bit of shelter out of the wind great views of those kestrels there now jenny your team works quite a lot with birds of prey i don't know if that's necessarily kestrels but that's quite a big part of your job isn't it yeah that's right um i work in the rspb's investigations team which is basically about detecting and preventing the illegal killing of raptors also known as birds of prey so it's a really sad fact for all of us who love birds um and really sort of celebrate seeing them in our skies there are some people who are illegally and systematically killing them and removing them from certain landscapes particularly in the uplands of the uk um and unfortunately in my home county of north yorkshire this is the worst place for rapt persecution and the biggest problem is on grouse moors which are managed intensively to support the highest possible density of red grouse in order for those birds to be commercially shot the problem arises is that predators like birds of prey which may impact on the number of birds are routinely killed now this is illegal and we actually saw a big upsurge of this uh during the first spring lockdown so now that we're back in lockdown again there's a bit of a concern that people are going to be back out there ramping up their efforts to kill birds of prey now that there's nobody watching but our team is still out there doing a fantastic job monitoring the hills and looking out for any wrong doing so rest assured your team do amazing work jenny and helping to raise the profile of this problem as well is quite important because now that we are really getting the word out there people aren't getting in touch with you when they see anything suspicious aren't they yeah they are absolutely which is fantastic i mean not all that many people are aware that this is happening but i think that is starting to change and people are keeping their eyes peeled and um reporting these things to us so please do if you notice a dead bird of prey or an injured bird of prey in sort of suspicious circumstances it's worth picking up the phone and calling either ourselves and also the police on 101 and just to reiterate that we're so so grateful um for the support of of our members we literally couldn't do this work without you so um please be aware of every day we do this work we're very very grateful for you guys um so yes thank you so much for all the support that you give the rspb because it allows us to do this kind of work and there's more information on how to join the rspb on our website rspb.org uk join like simon mayer and indeed all of us mike dilje is really looking forward to big garden bird watch from the 29th to the 31st of january i caught up with him to find out more about the birds in his garden and what he's been doing during lockdown right hello mike welcome to notes on nature tv thank you very very much for joining us um we're going to talk a little bit about how brilliant it is to be able to watch birds from the window as part of big garden bubble watch but in general as well it really adds a wonderful kind of lift to your day doesn't it i've been confined to barracks i've been stuck in headquarters at home but what i have found is that wildlife is an enormous solace to me um when i can't go out looking at it in every single corner of the british isles i'm lucky enough i should say to have a garden it's not a huge garden it's about the size of a tennis court and i have lots of feeders in it and i have a kitchen with lots of glass at the back that looks out onto my garden and i cannot tell you the enjoyment that i've had out of watching birds in my garden over the last year i mean it's literally been my saving grace it's basically my fix of wildlife has been watching the bull things she's coming in the goldfinches the chaff inches i've got a very warm garden so i get loads of finches in my garden and breakfast lunch dinner i sit there with a view with the birds coming in and it is getting me through this terrible pandemic so watching birds whilst it's an amazing hobby actually it's a very very good second best watching them purely in your own garden so i am lucky to have a garden and um they really have helped me through what is a really tough time for everyone it sounds like they are really brightening your day you talked a bit about finches there should we give viewers a few tips on um telling if some of those finches apart are there are there two or three perhaps that people get confused um i'm very lucky that i get a wide diversity of birds into my garden i think last year i did the rsbb big garden bird watch and i had 27 species wow that was amazing which is amazing we had a sparrow coming in going for the birds so i am lucky but i think probably finches are the most common birds i would think number one species in my garden is the goldfinch it's a really easy bird to identify it's got that target the red white and black face but also when you see it coming in it's got that lovely gold that flash of gold in the wings but the other two that come really commonly into the garden are green finch green finish bigger more bull headed big straw colored bell the males actually are beautiful and the females are a bit duller and more obscure but it's it's a finch really on steroids and i'm lucky because loads of people have had problems with green finches coming into their garden because of this disease trichominosis but that doesn't seem to have afflicted the green finches now i live so green finches are really common but my favorite bird jamie has to be the bullfinch and it's a bird i always hear before i see it's got a beautiful and once you learn that call you know it's coming in i've actually had three individual male bullfinches on the feeder at one time and of course the males have got that massive big pink breast and and the kind of black cap and the females are a dull kind of gray brown washed out virtual version but the lovely thing as well is the bull fish always flies off leaving you wanting more and as it whizzes off what just hits you in the eye like the gold in the goldfinch's wings is that massive big white rump so it flies off and you see that white rump bullfinch so my garden is a finch garden that's wonderful thank you so much there's three birds to look out for there now mike what would you say to someone who's considering taking part in big garden bird watch for the first time this year it's a brilliant way of spending an hour um put some you know most people feed their garden birds i mean if you've not got a fancy feeder like me with sunflower hearts some fat blocks you can put bacon rounds out cooked rice bits of bread and just what i've done is i've printed out this fortunately my family is quite lucky because they've got a know-it-all in the house so we don't need one of these but these are probably 90 of the birds that will come into the garden so sign up and print off the sheet and it's really easy all you do is you sit there for an hour go bluetooth robin blackbird song flush and it's wonderful and if you see six goldfinch at the same time you can count those six goldfinch so it's a really brilliant way of of getting people turned onto wildlife on their own doorstep and let's not forget of course this is citizen science at its best really wonderful and the rspb are using this data to see how the trends of birds are going i mean house sparrow and starling are the top two i never see them in my garden i'm too busy seeing finches so they're using that data to monitor the garden birds that we know best and it was the rspb garden bird watch that found out that song fishes were on this massive decline so i think the data that they're collecting is invaluable what we get out of it is an immense amount of enjoyment for an hour it's the ultimate win-win scenario now one way of getting plenty of wild visitors in your garden is to make them feel at home here's adrian thomas with a suggestion you'll often hear me going on about the importance of a log pile for wildlife which is great when you've got something like this which i can see is covered in springtails and wood lice and millipedes what if you don't have logs well the thing is that a stick pile is just as good for wildlife you can be as creative as you want to you can make it as big as you want to and you're bound to have some lying around or when you're doing prunings just gather them up put them in a pile add to it month on month year on year and you'll be creating a home for all sorts of wildlife for me this is a place where my ren's breed and where my donuts sing and who knows what frogs and toads and mutes live away under there during the winter so go on get sticking as well as logging that was brilliant there from adrian always full of sage advice bit of a gardening pun there building a pile of sticks if you don't have logs is great as adrian says he's getting birds nesting there he's getting probably all sorts of things wood like spiders ladybirds hibernating they really are wonderful little habitats and i've been trying to build a few of those in my own garden and jenny you've been doing the same i think yeah that's right i mean we can all sort of treat our gardens like a bit of a mini nature reserve and i've been leaving a patch of my grass to grow long and yeah planting all sorts of things that are good for pollinators and it's just so rewarding as well when you start to get the insects and then the birds coming in so definitely 100 advise doing anything like that and stay tuned to notes on nature tv for more wildlife gardening advice in the future so we hope you've enjoyed this episode please remember to like us subscribe if you're on youtube you can follow us if you're on ig tv and let us know in the comments if there's anything you'd like us to cover in future episodes thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: RSPB Video

Views: 28,858

Rating: 4.931232 out of 5

Keywords: COP26, Biodiversityloss, Glasgow, RSPB, Scottishpower, OneyeartoCOP, Sustainability, NatureBasedSolutions, Youth, ClimateChange

Id: xeT63hQyXdE

Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2021