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Greylag geese, black-headed gulls, maybe even the stork: will these soon be the garden bird friends of great tits, blue tits, sparrows, robins and blackbirds? The 21st National Garden Bird Count will take place on the weekend of January 26th, 27th and 28th. Partly at the initiative of the Bird Protection of the Netherlands, which declared this this year Year of the House Sparrow (see box).
Last year, 140,000 people across the Netherlands counted the birds in their garden or from their balcony for half an hour. Schools, petting zoos and other institutions are taking part.
In this way, bird conservationists want to find out what developments are happening. Which species are increasing or decreasing? And above all: What can you do with projects and in discussions with governments and ministries to improve the living conditions of our garden birds, i.e. more greenery, fewer fences and above all: more shrubs.
2024 The Year of the House Sparrow
How do we help the house sparrow? is the key question this year of the house sparrow. Where does he feel at home?
In the coming breeding season, the Bird Protection Association would like to ask the population to take part in the “Where does the sparrow live?” count, among other things by taking an inventory of the nesting sites.
Timo Roeke (41), senior conservationist at bird protection in the Eastern Netherlands region, sees positive but also worrying developments thanks to the counts.
As a volunteer, he also serves as the city’s bird advisor. “In the Netherlands we have an extremely clean living environment,” he says from his office. “Conifers, for example, are increasingly being replaced by fences. This has a negative effect on house sparrows, for example, which like to seek protection in dense hedges. This causes house sparrow numbers to decline.”
Roeke: “We also see that shrubs, preferably berry-bearing native species, are less common in urban gardens. People want trees and lawns, not matted bushes. But this is the ideal place for shrub-nesting birds such as wrens, robins and long-tailed tits.”
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Beautiful sparrow finches
The count data is welcome for bird protection, for example, to carry out campaigns, says Roeke. Now, as European nature legislation introduces new policies to make the world greener, we are engaging with local and national governments: “We are calling for more greenery, both in public spaces and in private gardens.” Birds benefit from native plants and not the exotic ones from the garden centers. They provide little or no nutrition.”
A bird counting app
Garden bird counting is considered citizen science. Interested parties can download an app with common species and the bird protection website offers instructions. For the first time, in addition to garden heroes such as robins and finches, we also see species such as greylag goose and black-headed gull. I once spotted two winter storks sitting comfortably on their nest on a counting weekend on a farm in Friesland. These were two of the average 900 wintering storks. This is also valuable data, says Roeke. Then you see that climate change is playing an increasingly important role. From the balconies in the city you can mainly see seagulls, such as the black-headed gull and the lesser gull, and in gardens with ponds a species such as the greylag goose is often found.
Most counters are located in the Randstad, for example 14,000 in North Holland and 18,000 in South Holland. It would be desirable to have more participants in the country, because trends and changes in rural areas are important. Roeke worries about jackdaws, those exuberant fliers who can be seen having fun flying as they tumble back and forth: “They have fewer breeding opportunities since houses no longer have roof tiles under which they can breed. Sometimes our land should be less cultivated for the birds.”
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