The RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch is over – so if you forgot to spend an hour this weekend checking out the birds in your garden I'm afraid you're too late! If you did, then make sure you submit your results – either on paper, or by using the RSPB's preferred (and environmentally-friendly) method of logging onto their website
It's still too soon to give the results of this snapshot survey of the ups and downs of Britain's garden birds, but the RSPB is expecting that sometime early on Saturday morning the 50 millionth bird ever recorded was logged – not bad for a survey that started with just a few hundred people 30 years ago this year.
We also know that Guardian website users were among the keenest participants, at least judging by the action reported on Sunday's live blog. I was joined by One Show presenter Mike Dilger, Coronation Street actor Sean Wilson, and three professional birders – Richard Bashford and Darren Oakley-Martin from the RSPB and Neil Rigby from Birding UK. And just to show that birding really has become cool, Martin Noble and Scott Wilkinson of the rock band British Sea Power. Here's what happened…
All of us being men, there is a certain amount of jockeying for position, as we try to upstage everyone else's sightings with our own. Having said that, at the start most of us are playing down our chances by mentioning the weather (raining and windy in most places), the neighbour's cat, and the general lack of any bird action.
Not until 1.14pm does anything other than the usual tits, finches, and sparrows turn up – when Mike Dilger (posting from a garden in deepest Sussex) casually mentions two cock pheasants picking up dropped seed, swiftly followed by a treecreeper.
The gloves are off! I reveal a redwing, which Mike promptly trumps with a siskin. Meanwhile Scott is having trouble with his computer, Richard has logged a pair of goldfinches (thanks to his neighbour's nyger seeds – doesn't he have any of his own?!), while the rest of us are making do with wood pigeons and collared doves.
The second half hour of a garden birdwatch can, let's be honest, be a little dispiriting, as the birds you see are usually repeats from the first half. One participant bemoans the Guardian's lack of timing – pointing out that the hour from 1pm-2pm is one of the quietest times for garden birds. Our editor Adam, perhaps sensing our flagging interest, points us in the direction of "a fab photo of a blue tit". Doesn't he realise we are seriously competitive birders?! Actually it is a lovely photo.
Mike is still adding new birds, in a desperate race to win before he and his host depart for a pub lunch, and ticks off marsh tit and nuthatch. I find myself wondering if he is actually in a local woodland rather than a garden. Sean, meanwhile, is taking pleasure in the 21 starlings lining up on the electricity cable by his house.
At 1.44pm it all takes off in Neil's garden – a veritable array of birds, including our first song thrush of the hour. Richard resorts to desperate measures, recruiting his son Frankie to count for him. It seems that the ability to perform simple sums isn't required for RSPB staff.
Sean is now motoring: as well as a dunnock he casually mentions that last Friday he saw a little owl – a seriously good garden bird, though he can't count it as it wasn't seen during the hour. Richard can count his reed bunting – only the second he has ever seen in his garden. Scott knows he is beaten, and counters with a resident grey squirrel. It turns out that this is not the only mammal spotted during the weekend – one couple from Dorset are doing the survey when they are distracted by a passing raccoon. Not sure the RSPB has a space on their website for that sighting.
We're in the home straight now, and in a late flurry Neil adds a soaking wet dunnock, Richard gets a long-tailed tit, and I finish off with a raven – not a typical garden bird, but it lands in a tree at the back so I can count it. The clock strikes two and we all head indoors for a cuppa.
Swapping our sightings on the live blog, or checking out the RSPB website for the results, is what makes the Big Garden Birdwatch such fun. It's a far cry from when I began birding back in the 1970s, when you could spend hours in the field and not even meet another birdwatcher. Nowadays, when people's sense of being part of a wider community can seem pretty fragile, we birders are doing OK – and this weekend, half a million of us joined together in this simple but very enjoyable survey to prove it.
Vote here for your favourite garden bird image submitted by readers.
