How smart are your school grounds?Well, according to the results of this year's Big Schools' Birdwatch, the answer could well be, 'very'! Of the top 25 species seen in school grounds across the UK, four were members of the 'corvidae', or crow, family - the brainboxes of the bird world. But more on that later. Because first of all, we want to say an enormous thank you to the 75,500 children and teachers who took part in Big and Little Schools' Birdwatch this year, and who counted a total of 83,792 birds for us! We hope you all had lots of fun taking part. For the second year in a row, the blackbird flew into the top spot, with an average of 4.27 birds seen per school. The top ten birds seen during Big Schools' Birdwatch 2010: | Position | Species | Average per school |
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1 | blackbird | 4.27 | 2 | starling | 3.85 | 3 | woodpigeon | 3.06 | 4 | house sparrow | 2.93 | 5 | black-headed gull | 2.78 | 6 | blue tit | 2.56 | 7 | carrion crow | 2.54 | 8 | magpie | 1.88 | 9 | robin | 1.70 | 10 | chaffinch | 1.65 |
The information gathered from the Birdwatch is very useful to us. This year's results show that numbers for most species are lower than those recorded last year, which may be a result of the cold and snowy weather we experienced this winter. Check out the top 20 to see who else made an appearance in your school grounds this year. We've also got the county and country breakdown of results below, and this year you can even compare your results with the national ones.
BSBW country-by-country results 2010Download the country-by-country breakdown of results for the Big Schools' Birdwatch 2010. Excel spreadsheet, 20Kb Download BSBW county-by-county results 2010Download the county-by-county breakdown of results for the Big Schools' Birdwatch 2010. Results only given for counties with at least 10 participating schools. Excel spreadsheet, 196Kb Download Something to crow aboutCarrion crows, magpies, jackdaws and rooks were all spotted this year, having learnt to make use of school grounds as an excellent place to find a meal – especially after breaktimes! In fact, because these birds are so intelligent, they are very adaptable and able to take advantage of all sorts of habitats, therefore finding lots of different sources of food. There are some great examples that show how clever corvids are. One carrion crow was reported to open nuts by dropping them on a pedestrian crossing, letting passing cars crack the shell open. Once the traffic lights turned red, it would then fly down to safely collect the contents! Most corvids bury some of their food to eat later. It has been recorded that some of these birds have been able to remember where they have hidden food up to nine months later – what amazing memories! One particularly ingenious member of the corvid family, the New Caledonian crow, found on the Pacific Island of New Caledonia, is famous for making tools from twigs and leaves. It uses these tools to find food that it would not be able to reach otherwise, cleverly using them to hook tasty grubs from holes in trees. We hope you enjoyed taking part in the Big and Little Schools' birdwatches and finding out about the feathered visitors to your school grounds. This activity helps us put together a picture of what is happening with our common birds over the whole country, so thank you very much for sending in your results. They are all important to us, no matter whether you saw lots of birds or very few. We hope you will join in again next year!
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