Despite a decline in numbers nationally, garden birds are visiting in healthy at Great Comp Garden in  Sevenoaks 

While Great Comp Garden is known as a plant paradise, it’s also a site of particular interest for the Kentish bird population.

Senior Gardener, Kate Harrison and her team, have been maintaining a monthly bird survey to support the health and diversity of the population and to help raise awareness of the birds they host in their seven acre garden in Platt near Sevenoaks.

The team believe that surveys like these in home gardens are a really good way of supporting the work of the leading ornithology charity the RSPB.    According to the RSPB (whose recent Big Garden Bird Watch Survey has been counted for 2021), over the last 50 years, 40 million birds have vanished from the UK’s skies.

The bird song at this time of year at Great Comp Garden reaches a peak in late spring and so far this month, the gardening team have spotted an impressive 31 different garden birds including:

Blackbirds, Blackcap, Blue Tit, Buzzard, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Collared Dove, Carrion Crow, Dunnock, Feral Pigeon, Fieldfare, Great Tit, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Greenfinch, Gold Finch, Gold Crest, Green Woodpecker, Heron,Jay, Kestrel, Longtailed Tit, Magpie, Nuthatch, Pheasant, Robin, Sparrow Hawk, Song Thrush, House Sparrow, Wood Pigeon, Wren and Yellowhammer.

Kate Harrison was particularly pleased to spot a pair of Yellowhammer birds. “It was a real thrill to see a male and female Yellowhammer on the bird feeder at the end of April, and to see their repeated return.”

The Yellowhammer population fell in the UK by 54 per cent between 1970 and 1998*. The main factor for the population was low overwinter survival, probably because fewer seed food sources are available to them on farmland.

ENDS

Photo Credit: Vikki Rimmer