Garden Wildlife
Garden Wildlife
Garden Wildlife
Garden Wildlife
Sources of information
The Wildlife Gardening Forum is extremely grateful to Cambridge Zoologist Roy Smith who has designed this section and written many of the pages himself.
The best sources of information on British garden (and other) birds is the species accounts on the BTO website, and we have used these as our factual yardstick. We have focused on brief descriptions and illustrations of the appearance, calls and habits of each of the top species, with a bit about how each species is faring in the UK based on the BTO Breeding Bird Survey, which is another of their citizen science projects.
We have illustrated the pages with images from variety of sources, notably from Roy Smith himself, supplemented by portraits from Wikimedia Commons. The recording of song and calls are from Xeno-Canto which is an amazing source of recordings.
When looking up bird information on line make sure you are using the species (Latin) name to search on - for example a ‘goldfinch’ or a ‘robin’ in the USA is a different species from a ‘goldfinch’ or ‘robin’ in the UK!
As well as pages on bird species we have:
• Bird biology - why birds are special
• Dinosaurs in your trees? – bird evolution
• Bird citizen science projects for you
Page written by Roy Smith and Steve Head
Introduction to garden birds
Birds are one of the top interests for wildlife gardeners, placed third after the runaway winner which is wildflowers, and close behind bees (all sorts).
What birds will I see in my garden?
One of the joys of birds is that they move around by flight, so almost any bird can turn up almost anywhere. This is the basis of ‘twitching’ – birders chasing down sightings of every possible rarity that turns up storm-blown or through migration error.
This applies to gardens too, so in theory the potential list of birds in your garden is the entire official list of birds occurring in the UK! However, in practice there is a group of species that are likely to frequent most gardens in the UK. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has for several decades been running a citizen-science survey – Garden Birdwatch) and this has produced a list of species ranked in terms of their frequency of recording in gardens.
We have used this as the basis for including 50 species in this website, and we have pages on all the birds recorded in more than about 3% of gardens, plus a few more of special interest. Your chance of seeing these will depend on where you are in Britain and Ireland, and the situation of your garden from an inner-city to rural setting.
Seen in 10% to 19% of gardens
Seen in 9% to 5% of gardens
Seen in less than 5% of gardens
Sources of information
The Wildlife Gardening Forum is extremely grateful to Cambridge Zoologist Roy Smith who has designed this section and written many of the pages himself.
The best sources of information on British garden (and other) birds is the species accounts on the BTO website, and we have used these as our factual yardstick. We have focused on brief descriptions and illustrations of the appearance, calls and habits of each of the top species, with a bit about how each species is faring in the UK based on the BTO Breeding Bird Survey, which is another of their citizen science projects.
We have illustrated the pages with images from variety of sources, notably from Roy Smith himself, supplemented by portraits from Wikimedia Commons. The recording of song and calls are from Xeno-Canto which is an amazing source of recordings.
When looking up bird information on line make sure you are using the species (Latin) name to search on - for example a ‘goldfinch’ or a ‘robin’ in the USA is a different species from a ‘goldfinch’ or ‘robin’ in the UK!
As well as pages on bird species we have:
Page written by Roy Smith and Steve Head
Seen in less than 5% of gardens
Seen in 9% to 5% of gardens
Seen in 10% to 19% of gardens
What birds will I see in my garden?
One of the joys of birds is that they move around by flight, so almost any bird can turn up almost anywhere. This is the basis of ‘twitching’ – birders chasing down sightings of every possible rarity that turns up storm-blown or through migration error.
This applies to gardens too, so in theory the potential list of birds in your garden is the entire official list of birds occurring in the UK! However, in practice there is a group of species that are likely to frequent most gardens in the UK. The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has for several decades been running a citizen-science survey – Garden Birdwatch) and this has produced a list of species ranked in terms of their frequency of recording in gardens.
We have used this as the basis for including 50 species in this website, and we have pages on all the birds recorded in more than about 3% of gardens, plus a few more of special interest. Your chance of seeing these will depend on where you are in Britain and Ireland, and the situation of your garden from an inner-city to rural setting.
Introduction to garden birds
Birds are one of the three big interests for wildlife gardeners, placed third after the runaway winner which is wildflowers, and close behind bees (all sorts).
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