Hints and tips to help you to identify the different birds in your garden or on your daily walk!
Birdwatching is a great, low cost hobby to get in to. It can all start in the convenient setting of your garden. You don’t even need binoculars or spotting scopes! All you need is a window overlooking the garden, a keen eye, patience and a very simple bird identification guide.
Dr Hardeep Singh Mudhar has compiled a shortlist of common garden birds that you may encounter. Happy bird spotting!
Blackbird
This is one of the commonest garden birds. The male is all black with a distinctive orange-yellow bill and yellow eye-ring. The female is dark brown, with dark yellow bill, with a paler brown throat with dull spotting of chest.
You will see it hopping and running along the lawn, as it searches for worms, bugs, seeds and fruits.
It has one of the most beautiful bird songs of all garden birds and is best heard during the dawn chorus in the early morning.
Blue Tit
If you have a bird table or bird feeder in the garden-you’ll definitely see the blue tit feeding from it. It has a blue crown with white stripe, white cheeks with black collar, blue wings and tail and yellow chest and tummy feathers.
It’s quite an acrobat and will be seen hanging upside down from the bird feeder, twigs or small branches of bushes and trees.
Coal Tit
One of the smaller members of the tit family. it has a black head with a distinctive white patch on the back of the head (nape), white cheeks and a black throat.
The wings have white stripes. It often climbs up tree trunks.
The next episode will feature three more common UK birds that you can spot from your very own garden!
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