BTO/CJ Garden BirdWatch 25 June - 1 July
The highlight in the garden this week was, of course, the juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker who visited on Thursday. He or she appeared just in time for me to take part in the BTO's GSW Survey which is being run in conjunction with Radio 4's Shattered Earth programme. More information on the survey can be seen here.Whilst mowing the lawn earlier this week I found some hedgehog poo - so we watched the garden that night and sure enough we have an adult hedgehog visiting us. Tonight he gets some dog food! The number of mammals recorded in our garden is currently very low: Only hedgehog and rabbit. We have also had one single toad.
I found a two-spotted ladybird on one of Birdboy's sunflowers.
I received this year's Mammals on Roads Survey forms from the Mammals Trust UK this week. The survey runs from July to September and I record all roadkill seen on any journey longer than 20 miles. More info on the survey can be found on this page here. It sounds a bit grim, but it gives the Mammals Trust a good idea of which mammals are where and how well they are doing. Also, if they get many deaths recorded on a single stretch of road they may put up warning signs.
I think the only survey I don't do is the National Shopper's Survey. I'm too busy doing other surveys ;o)
- Greenfinch (5)
- Chaffinch (8)
- Siskin (2)
- Blackbird (6)
- Woodpigeon (3)
- House Sparrow (5)
- Starling (8)
- Dunnock (1)
- Blue Tit (1)
- Pied Wagtail (1)
- Goldfinch (2)
- Great Spotted Woodpecker (1)
- Collared Dove (1)
- Jackdaw (1)
- Sparrowhawk (1)
Labels: BTO
posted by The Bird Woman at 10:25 PM
3 Comments:
I would be interested in doing the squashed mammals survey, but I rarely do any journeys of over 20 miles. Does it have to be a continuous 20 miles, or can it be 10 miles there, 10 miles back (ie the same stretch of road, albeit several hours later?) as I do that virtually daily to different places, it's normally around that distance just to take the dog somewhere that isn't private, can't let off lead, dog ban etc etc!
Hi Janice,
You can't do the same stretch of road more than once in thirty days, so you wouldn't be able to do a there and back survey, if you see what I mean. And they do ask for journeys which are only twenty miles or more.They say "shorter journeys are more likely to have no sightings than longer ones, and restricting surveys to routes of 20 miles or more ensures the proportion of surveys with no sightings is truly representational"
The survey runs from July-September every year so maybe you could ask for some forms just in case you do go on a journey of more than twenty miles? Or download a form from the mtuk site.
http://www.mtuk.org/index.php?page=projects_survey
I'm always the passenger in the car - I wouldn't do it if I were the driver because of the amount of info they need for each sighting:
species/how many/dead or alive/milometer reading/road number/nearest village/county/time.
Then on top of that you have to record where you are on your journey every ten miles:
Milometre/road number/nearest village/county/and apx distance travelled on motorway/dual carr/urban.
Roadkill is not included on motorways, DCs, or in urban areas.
If we had to stop every time we found some roadkill, we'd never get to our destination!
lol, thanks Emma, I think I will have to give it a miss then, as I am always alone in the car, and wouldn't be able to get enough information, and actually stopping on the roads round here to make notes would be too dangerous in most cases.
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