Each year, the RSPB ask people to count the birds that visit their garden or local public place, for the Big Garden Birdwatch.
Take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch
Friday 23 – Sunday 25 January 2026
500,000+, that’s over HALF A MILLION people, regularly take part in this event. In 2025 a whopping 590,000 completed the survey. Do you?
The huge numbers of people who take part enable the RSPB to create a ‘snapshot’ of bird numbers across the UK, region by region, and to see how different species are either thriving or declining.
The survey has shown us that house sparrows and starlings have been significantly affected with seriously declining numbers. But the collared dove has done exceptionally well – they only started breeding in the UK in 1955. While it highlights the problems it’s also an alert to what’s happening which gives time to try to put things right.
Don’t forget – if you take any photos of the birds, share them with us! Join the Visit Fylde Coast Facebook Group and post them there.
40+ years of the Big Garden Birdwatch
The Big Garden Birdwatch started out on Blue Peter, when children were asked to report what birds they saw in their garden. Back in the days before the internet, a whopping 34 mailbags full of answers arrived, for the RSPB to sort out!
All these years later, the Big Garden Birdwatch is now the world’s largest wildlife survey. Half a million people become citizen scientists for the weekend to take part. In 2014 the RSPB started asking what other wildlife visits your garden.
Count the Birds
All you need to do is sit with a pen and a piece of paper, or a printout of the handy RSPB bird ID sheet. Watch the birds for an hour in your garden or local park. You can do it from inside your house, out in the garden or park, or maybe join in with a local group.
You simply need to count the highest number of each species that you see on the ground or perched in bushes at any one time (not flying past), and then record what you see.
The Big Garden Birdwatch of 2011 listed 70 species of birds that visited gardens all over the UK, including woodpeckers, jackdaws, willow tits and goldfinches, plus bramblings, waxwings and wrens. How many of them do you get in your garden?
Strange visitors to our shores
The Fylde Coast is part of the migratory path for many birds which come in and out of the country during the year.
So you might also get a chance to see some strange visitors blown off course, into your garden or nearby open spaces.
For example in early 2011, Cleveleys came to life with bird watchers who flocked here to see a Purple Sandpiper. It set up home for a few weeks on the rock groyne just next to the cafe. A month or two later, a Northern Wheatear was blown off course and took refuge for a couple of hours in the shelter of a seafront back garden. They’ve been seen in other years too.
And amazing Aerial Displays!
If you’re interested in ornithology – or just love a great view – you’ll know about the murmurations at Blackpool.
During the colder months of the year, thousands upon thousands of starlings flock to roost at the seafront. They head to the coast from miles inland, to sleep for the night with safety in numbers.
Feed the Birds
Feeding garden birds, especially through the harsh months, is vital for their survival when natural winter food supplies are running low.
Not only will you help them to survive, you’ll get to see their antics close up as they squabble for food and eat all your treats, and may even be encouraged to nest in your garden.
Feeding the birds also has a major boost for gardeners. Attracting them to your easy food source means they’ll also spend time picking about in your borders and bushes. Helpfully, they clear away greenfly, bugs and slugs, keeping your plants pest free.
- Here’s our recipe for high energy, homemade wild bird cake
For complete details about how, what and when to feed the birds, learn more from the RSPB website at this link
Meanwhile in our back garden…
For my own part, I’ve always fed the garden birds from being a young girl. I learned how to make fat cakes for the birds from Blue Peter!
When we moved to Cleveleys I was astonished at the lack of garden birds and quickly set about attracting them to our back garden. Many householders have concrete gardens near to the sea because of the inhospitable weather conditions, so one of the first things we did was to convert our own concrete jungle into a green oasis.
Making a garden bird friendly
Even with a regular battering from the weather, we now have a mixed hedgerow. We grow hawthorne, fruit trees, honeysuckle, ivy, roses and more. They’re all twined together to create shelter and habitats for nesting birds and a year round food supply.
Our lawn is handy for us to use as a family, but it’s also a hunting ground for the local blackbirds. They also nest in our garden. Last year we began trialling a wilder, less-cut and no-fertilise look, with what you might call weeds – or wildflowers – mixed in. It proved extremely successful with all manner of insects and birds enjoying it through the year. And it’s a lot easier to maintain too!
Fresh water is important and we provide a big saucer of water which they all use all year round for drinking and bathing. Each day I put out just enough food for them to eat that day. I buy ‘no mess’ or ‘no grow’ food, so they eat the whole thing. Minimal rubbish accumulates under the feeders and barely anything grows there either.
Wild areas are important in a garden too. The fronts of our borders are fairly tidy. But leaves are left at the back for the birds to rummage in. We’ve all got an out-of-sight corner – we mostly leave ours to the wildlife.
Keep the cats out – and other predators. We know it’s life when birds of prey hunt for mice and small birds – we just don’t like to watch it take our birds! Cats is another matter – well fed and hunting because it’s a game. We definitely don’t want cats catching birds in our garden – here’s some ways to stop them.
Bringing a garden to life!
To my delight, our garden is now alive each day with birdsong. There’s the twittering of a sparrow colony, the song of the starlings, and the melodic chirping of goldfinches. They’re beautiful birds, the red capped clown of the sky that seems to be very common around here. We’ve even seen them nesting in the trees on Fleetwood high street and at Affinity (Freeport). Now, they nest here with us each year too, attracted by the hedge and our niger feeder!
Along with the sparrows and starlings, we have a resident robin and pair of blackbirds. We get visiting garden birds in the shape of wrens, blue tits, great tits and collared doves.
Nesting Birds
We did have starlings nesting in the cavities in the house. But that was stopped due to an unacceptable level of their mess down the back door! They’re now quite content in their parrot nesting box right under the eaves. They raise their babies there and shelter during the winter months.
Our pair of blackbirds usually makes half a dozen nests before settling down to raise babies. However, the sparrows never did use their sparrow box that I put up for them a few years ago!
Other visitors to our garden
Less popular with some people, but we also have a tame pair of seagulls and dare I say it, a few visiting feral pigeons. They all co-exist quite happily in our little back garden. Having your own seagulls has its advantages too. Being territorial, they keep away the hundreds of other seagulls who might otherwise visit.
My biggest challenge is keeping the sparrowhawk away – it’s intent on eating my sparrow population one by one. When the baby birds fledge the next problem is the cats of the neighbourhood and making sure they don’t dispatch the little ones. It’s not good for my nerves either!
A gardeners garden
On the face of it our garden looks like a gardeners garden. At a glance it’s neat and tidy and well ordered with straight borders and lots of flowers and neatly trimmed plants. But it’s a haven for wildlife.
We don’t use sprays or chemicals unless we absolutely have to. Spring will see me squashing lily beetles between finger and thumb with gay abandon. The birds repay us by eating the greenfly and other bugs. We’ve had several wild bee nests under the shed and been thrilled to watch them buzzing about.
I leave a trail of leaves along the back of the borders during winter for the birds to forage about in. We mostly leave the bottom bit of garden alone where it’s out of sight of the house.
Personally I get a huge amount of satisfaction from a few pounds worth of bird food a week. I’m supporting a few birds of two species which are in trouble, and enjoying less pests in my garden as a result. So we all win!
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