One of the other great indoor sports is watching the birds in your garden as they chomp through their portions of nuts, fat or whatever. Birds can be brainy. One contributor to BirdWatch Ireland's annual survey of garden birds tells how he tied a bone on a piece of string to a branch. Three rooks arrived promptly. "One proceeded to flip the string around the branch with its bill until it was short enough to reach the meat."
More than 500 people participated last winter, from every county in this part of Ireland except Leitrim. That is a vacancy the organisers would like to see filled. Three counties of Northern Ireland were represented. A total of different species numbering 82 might surprise many of us. This is for the winter 1999/2000. One garden in Wicklow actually had a total of 44; a rural garden. Lowest was six from several suburban Dublin gardens. Overall average total for rural gardens was 59.9; for urban/suburban gardens, 39.9 birds garden/ week.
Giving liberally of peanuts was one Kildare surveyor who stocks 15 feeders. It is reckoned that the huge number of tits attracted to this array eat their way through more than 3,000 nuts a day. Less common garden visitors included Snipe, Woodcock, Dipper and Green Sandpiper. Less likely, but welcome, to some lucky participants were: Sparrowhawk, Kestrel, Buzzard, Peregrine Falcon, Merlin, Long-Eared Owl, Hen Harrier and in one case, "the rare Barn Owl".
In one or two of these visitors you might suspect that the nuts were less the objective than the tits and other birds feeding. And quite spectacular was the recording of a bird which breeds in Mongolia and China, has only once been recorded in Britain and never before in Ireland - a Brown Shrike. It appeared in a Kerry garden.
You never know, says the article in Wings, the quarterly journal of BirdWatch Ireland. Surprise note: the article says of the "Much-maligned Magpie" that "research in the UK has found no link between the increase in Magpie numbers and songbird declines".
Top 20 garden birds Winter 1999/2000 were: Blackbird, Robin, Blue Tit, Chaffinch, Great Tit, Magpie, Greenfinch, Coal Tit, Wren, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Song Thrush, Jackdaw, Starling, Rook, Woodpigeon, Siskin, Collared Dove, Pied Wagtail, Goldfinch. Yes, the House Sparrow appears to be on the decline. Y