Our Patch for Big Garden Birdwatch

We're joing the Guardian to participate in the Big Garden Bird Watch 2009

We will be watching over our garden, so we thought we'd better tell you a bit about it...

It is located in the Weald of Kent and we are watching over about an acre plot surrounded by gardens, orchards and arable fields.

It is divided as follows:

Front garden
Mainly gravel drive with borders and yew hedging. One 20ft conifer and similar size oak tree in each corner. There is a large thorny evergreen shrub at the front of the house which has had Robins, Spotted Flycatchers and Blackbirds nesting in it.

Upper Back garden
The upper part is cut lawn with flower beds, enclosed by 12ft conifer hedge with nesting boxes on one side, sheds and shrubs on the other.  One large cherry tree with ivy covered trunk and a silver birch, both with nesting boxes.

Lower Back garden
In the lower part is an orchard of about 20 mixed fruit trees and a large wild area of various types of grasses. This is about half of the plot. The area is surrounded with indigenous hedges planted in 2000.

Feed
We'll be using mixed seed, niger seed, fat balls and kitchen scraps. These will be distributed on a bird table and various seed holders.

37 bird species seen in or from our garden over 10 years:

1. Blackbird
2. Blackcap
3. Blue tit
4. Bullfinch
5. Carrion crow
6. Chaffinch
7. Coal tit
8. Collared dove
9. Cuckoo
10. Dunnock
11. Fieldfare
12. Goldcrest
13. Goldfinch
14. Great spotted woodpecker
15. Great tit
16. Green woodpecker
17. Greenfinch
18. House martin
19. House sparrow
20. Jackdaw
21. Jay
22. Kestrel
23. Lesser spotted woodpecker
24. Linnet
25. Long-tailed tit
26. Magpie
27. Marsh Tit
    
28. Mistle thrush
29. Nuthatch
30. Pheasant
31. Robin
32. Song thrush
33. Sparrowhawk
34. Spotted flycatcher
35. Swift
36. Treecreeper
37. Wren

Other animals of note:

1. Grass snake
2. Common Frog
3. Common Toad
4. Common Lizard
5. Slow worm
6. Bats
   

Most unusual observation
Crows soaking their dry bread crusts into the bird bath to make them softer.