I now have four years worth of data about the birds that visit my garden, so I thought now would be a good time to look at the latest stats, and how they compare to previous years.
In the year from June 2013 to May 2014 I was able to keep records on 38 days. On average I saw 15 individual birds of 7 species per day, although that varied a lot by month. November was the best month for bird watching, with an average of 29 individuals from 8 species per day, while July was the quietest month, with only 10 birds of 4 species per day. The highest number of species seen per day was only 10, which is down from 13 last year.
The most regular visitors were house sparrows and woodpigeons, with at least one of each seen on every observation day. The most numerous visitors were house sparrows, with an average of 4.6 seen per day. They were followed by starlings, with an average of 2.8, woodpigeons (2.3) and blackbirds (1.4).
How does this compare to previous years?
Well, the overall average number of birds and number of species is pretty similar. But there have been some winners and losers in the last few years, as the bar graph shows.
Winners
-
Male blackbird on lawn House sparrows (from an average of 1.7 to 4.6 per day)
- Dunnocks – the average number seen per day in the last year is roughly double that of 2010-11
- Woodpigeon numbers have also doubled since 2010-11
- Blackbirds – increased from 0.9 last year to 1.4
- Magpies – slight increase
Losers
-
Bluetit gathering bits of twine to use as nest material 
Robin in the snow Bluetits – these used to be some of the most regular visitors to the garden, but are now seen much less frequently
- Jackdaws
- Robins – the average number of robins seen has halved in the last year.
If you’re interested in how these figures compare to national observations, read this post on the Big Garden Birdwatch results.
Wild South 
Very good! Thank you.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
I love wildlife AND geeky graphs, so I love this post. I haven’t had as much variation in visitors as you; mostly starlings, blackbirds, wood pigeons and sparrows, and once a sparrowhawk which was pretty exciting. The red kites fly pretty low but we’ve never had one land in the garden…. yet.
Thank you! 🙂
You’re lucky to have such good views of red kites – they’re quite spectacular. I haven’t seen any round here yet, but you never know – they seem to be doing well at the moment.
They’re breeding like crazy here, I think we have at least 3 pairs near the village. One of the release sites in Northants is only about 20 miles away. We’ve been living here about 12 years and they’re definitely doing better; we never used to see them over the village much and now I get woken up by them in the morning (well, them or the children).
That’s good news (apart from your disturbed sleep, of course! 😉 ) Enjoy watching them!