Bird of the week - Blackbird

This really is the early bird that catches the worm.  It was the earliest arriving garden bird in the BTO Shortest Day Survey of 10 years ago (see here) and the BTO Early Bird Survey of a year ago (although I can't find the official results of this one on line).





There have been a lot more blackbirds in my garden since the New Year - a dozen or more at a time.  The local population will have been boosted by migrants from Europe and they are probably now moving into the garden because they have eaten most of the berries in the hedgerows.  This is confirmed by UK data from the BTO Garden BirdWatch which shows the increase in reporting of blackbirds in gardens after the autumn trough.

Blackbirds are also driven into gardens by cold weather (see here) so I may have even more next week.

To see the latest BTO BirdTrends data on long term population trends for blackbirds click here.