This weekend in England it was the RSPB’s 33rd ‘Big Garden Birdwatch’ (the RSPB is the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for all those who might not know which when you think about it is an enormous number of people) a weekend when friends and fanciers of our feathered friends gaze out into their gardens to identify and count the number of birds who have decided to land on their tiny patch of England that hasn’t as yet been repossessed by the banks.

Now I haven’t been in England for a few years but when I was there I didn’t just dedicate one weekend to watching English garden birds it was a full time occupation, I was always on the windowsill glued to the bird table or in the Spring watching our feathered cousins pick at the newly sown lawn.

So what on earth is the ‘Big Garden Birdwatch?’ Well to keep it simple, which is always nice, for 33 years now the RSPB have asked people to snoop on the feathered wildlife in their gardens, obviously as the RSPB is a charity there is no pay or reward and if you want to know the full results of the weekend’s activity you have to buy a report from them.

The Big Garden Birdwatch is believed to be the biggest “citizen science” exercise anywhere in the world and anyone can ‘join in’ all you have to do is to watch an open space, which can be your garden, a park or even a prison exercise yard for one hour and do that once a year and while you are watching the space just count the birds that land, unfortunately pouncing on them is frowned upon at all times by the RSPB and not only during the study. How was I suppose to know that? I’m a Cat after all.

So while you are watching your bit of England waiting for the flap of wings all you have to do is to count the birds that arrive and to avoid double counting you simply record the largest number of each species you see at any one moment.

The clever thing about this survey is that everyone taking part helps to create a countrywide snapshot of England’s ever changing populations of winter birds and over the years the survey has measured and confirmed the changes in populations of England’s birds which as last year’s survey reveals the number of species in England’s gardens stands at an impressive and mouthwatering 73!

So well done to the RSPB who have proved that not everything with a ‘royal’ connection is completely spoilt and useless, and they still think that they should be bought a new royal yacht but then that is another story that I have been trying to resist telling.

One bit of information from the Big Garden Birdwatch that I found interesting if not a little incriminating is that there number of birds in my old garden has increased dramatically since I left for central Europe where it’s reported the numbers of garden birds has begun to decline, nature is an odd thing isn’t it?

Below is a graph that has nothing to do with this blog article whatsoever but I think it makes it look ever so important and included it for that reason.

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About the Author – The Cat who writes blogs!

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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