20-02-2025: The RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch results for KU sites

 

Thank you to everyone who helped survey our Kingston University sites this year as part of the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch 2025

With 17 volunteers helping with the surveys this year, we managed to cover all of our sites, and survey 20 survey points with 22 surveys, where any repeat surveys (River House and Roehampton Vale entrance) were amalgamated so that only the maximum numbers for any species spotted are noted.

The weather definitely felt as if it impacted surveys this year, with the four days of our survey period being very windy with intermittent rain, this might account for the fact that we had lower then the reported average numbers of birds being spotted during our surveys (29 birds) on 16 out of 20 survey points. 

One the four points where we had above average numbers, it's likely to be linked to a combination of the species (gulls, crows and jackdaws) and the habitat (proximity or presence of large playing fields - grasslands) to the observation areas. 

The two sites which had the biggest number of species spotted were River House and Tolworth Court Sports Ground (when the sports ground was looked at as a whole). each with 15 species. 

KU's Top of the Bird-ops from 10th place to 1st in 2025 were:

Blackbirds just popped over the line into 10th place (in effect 7th place because of ties) spotted on 4 out of 20 survey sites. 

Jackdaws and Ring necked Parakeets screeched into joint 6th place on 8 out of 20 survey sites

Blue Tits and Robins hopped into joint 5th place in 9 out of 20 survey sites

Rock Doves (aka Feral Pigeon) and Great Tits came in joint 4th place found on 10 out of 20 survey sites

Wood Pigeons held onto third place by being present on 13 out of 20 sites.

Magpies - pipped the humble Wood Pigeon into second place on 14 out of 20 survey sites.

and Crows flew into first place this year on 16 out of 20 survey locations

All of our survey results have been entered into the main RSPB website. The charity are still accepting survey data until the 23rd of Feb 2025 https://www.rspb.org.uk/. It will be interesting to see how our results compare with this years results when they are published. 

Til next time :)