10 best kept garden bird secrets

A Nature UK article by Sam Dixon, 11 November 2010

Title image © Mike Foster

If you pay close attention to the visitors in your garden you might notice that there's more than meets the eye to your common or garden birds.

1. Your garden birds aren't your garden birds

Are you sure that's your blackbird? Image © Fran Kent

It's easy for us to get attached to our garden visitors but some of them are actually foreign imposters.

In autumn months as the weather turns, all sorts of birds flood in from Europe. There are starlings, siskins, bramblings, thrushes, robins, chaffinches, goldcrests, gulls and even pigeons passing through or stopping by for the winter. It's all about food, water and shelter. Gardens tend to have all three, making them the perfect places for birds to hunker down for winter when their summering grounds turn frosty.

And it's not just international. Blackbirds from the east of the UK will move across to the west and south-west in the winter, around the same time that the blackbirds from the continent arrive in the east. This is called chain migration.

So keep an eye out for different characters on your patch or perhaps keep an ear out for a foreign accent!

2. Outnumbered one to ten

There are secret cycles going on in your garden that you might not know about. Birds come and go between their favourite feeding grounds throughout the day.

Ringing studies have shown that at any one time we only see about 10% of our garden visitors. So if you regularly see about 10 blue tits, there are probably around 100 individuals actually using your feeders through the course of the day.

There's more of them than you think!

Robins prefer bird tables to bird feeders. Image © Carlene Byland

3. Our feathered friends don't favour feeders

We think we're being helpful but actually feeder designs don't necessarily have the birds in mind.

Given half the chance most garden birds will take food away to eat it in the relative safety of a bush or hedgerow. Feeders are often out in the open where we, and spying predators, can see them but it's much safer for the birds to feed under cover.

Some larger birds such as robins and blackbirds can't land on or cling to birdfeeders, so you may see robins attempting to hover to reach the food.

4. Pecking orders - your birdfeeder bully chain

Watch: David Attenborough