Big Garden Birdwatch 2017 at St Ives, Bingley - Sunday 29th January 2017

We had another enjoyable Big Garden Birdwatch at St Ives, near Bingley. As usual, we met at the bird hide in St Ives, next to Coppice Pond. We choose the same spot each year so we can easily compare each year's results. At around 10:45 we started our hour of counting the birds visiting the feeders. We had placed extra food out for the birds before the event to ensure we would attract as many species as possible. The weather was dry, still, clear and sunny - perfect.

Lots of helpers for this year's Big Garden Birdwatch

We saw more types of bird than in previous years, with a total of 13 species, although this year we didn't see a Treecreeper. The highlights were three Nuthatches giving us great views - this bird clearly is boss of the feeders here; two lovely Long-tailed Tits, and three tiny Goldcrests high up in the conifers behind the feeding station. The birds were:

• Coal Tit
• Blue Tit
• Great Tit
• Long-tailed Tit
• Blackbird
• Wood Pigeon
• Magpie
• Carrion Crow
• Dunnock
• Robin
• Wren
• Nuthatch
• Goldcrest

It's interesting that we didn't see any finches during the survey. Finches are seed-eaters and regularly come to garden bird feeders.

  Nuthatch, St Ives, Bingley - 29th January 2017

  Robin, St Ives, Bingley - 29th January 2017

Grey Squirrel, St Ives, Bingley - 29th January 2017

One of the Airedale Otters' notebooks

We will send the result of our survey off to the RSPB so they can add it to many others that will have been done up and down the country. You can see our results from the last four years here: 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013. The RSPB's results for last year's survey can be found here.

Thank you to everyone who came and help out with this year's count.