Bears' Garden Bird Watch

Hanley Bear and I spent a whole hour looking out of the kitchen window today, because we were helping Polar do the "Big Garden Bird Watch".  She explained that this is a survey done every year to see which types of birds and how many of each are visiting gardens.  The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) organises it and thousands of families take part.

'We have to watch for an hour,' said Polar, when she woke us up and got us out of our bear basket.  'We're supposed to record all the different birds that we see and the most we see of each type at any one time.  Can you bears manage to do that?  I'll lend you a small camera so you can take photographs of any birds you don't recognise.'

'That sounds like fun!' cried Hanley Bear, picking up Polar's little blue camera.  'I've spotted a duck already - and I've taken his photograph!'

'I'm afraid we can't count your City of Culture Tim Beak duck,' Polar told him.  'The RSPB only want us to count wild birds visiting the garden.'

Polar set the camera up on the kitchen scales and loaned us Grizzly's little pocket binoculars, which balanced on the other side of the scales, and she opened a fresh page of her bird spotting book where we could write down the birds we saw.  She also gave us some toast and marmalade to keep our strength up while we concentrated on our important job.

Soon, Hanley Bear and I had seen our first birds - a pair of blackbirds.  We thought it was very strange that they did so much running about on the ground when they had wings and could fly, until Hanley looked through the binoculars and saw one of them catch and eat a big squishy worm.

'Urgh!' said Hanley.  'I'm glad I'm not a blackbird if that's what you get for dinner!'

Some of the other birds had much nicer food.  Some starlings landed on the bird table and ate up the toast crumbs and some mixed seeds, then we saw a dainty little goldfinch eating sunflower seeds out of one of the feeders in the pear tree.  Hanley counted three starlings and I wrote the details down in Polar's little book.  Suddenly, they all flew away, as a big pigeon landed on the roof over the bird table, but it was too big to fit underneath it and eat the seeds and crumbs.

We also saw sparrows, dunnocks, a blue tit, a collared dove and even a tiny little wren - thanks to Hanley Bear's sharp eyes and Grizzly's binoculars.  After half an hour, however, it started to rain very hard and no more birds came into the garden.  Hanley and I carried on watching, hoping to see more birds, but we didn't see any new ones.

'Never mind, bears,' said Polar, looking at our list.  'You tried your best and you've done very well.  You could always sit in the kitchen window tomorrow or Wednesday, and see what you can see.  We always seem to get more birds, or more unusual birds, when it isn't a Big Garden Bird Watch day!'

We said we would be very happy to do more bird watches, but would need to put our coats and hats on in future, because it was quite cold sitting in the kitchen window.  'There needs to be a Royal Society for the Protection of Bears!' I said.

'Poor little bears - you are rather chilly,' said Polar, feeling our paws.  So she fed us some leek and potato soup to warm us up and then we went back to our nice, cosy bear basket in the living room and had an afternoon nap, so we can stay up late and watch Winterwatch.