Island housebuilders Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes are encouraging their residents to join in with the largest garden wildlife survey in the world – the Big Garden Birdwatch!
The Birdwatch, run by the RSPB since 1979, invites people across the UK to spend an hour counting the birds they see in their garden, or from their balcony, and report their sightings back to the RSPB. It’s a great activity for the whole family, and, with over 40 years of data, helps the RSPB to keep track of how well our beloved garden birds are doing year-on-year.
Signing up is free and includes a guide to help count and identify the birds, a RSPB shop voucher and advice on how to attract wildlife to your garden.
Barratt and David Wilson have been working in partnership with the RSPB since 2014 to show how new homes and communities can help support wildlife. Creating wildlife-friendly show gardens at many sites is one of a number of ways this is being achieved.
The RSPB website (www.rspb.org.uk) has lots of tips for encouraging birds to your home for the Birdwatch, and all year-round, including:
- Make a bird café – you can make a whole bird buffet in your kitchen! Rustle up a suet cake, set up an apple feeder, and even sprinkle out your leftovers – they’ll be appreciated by birds at any time, but especially now in the coldest part of the year. Be sure to check the RSPB website for advice on which leftover foods are safe however, as some foods can be harmful to birds and other wildlife.
- Set up a drinks station – water is important all year round for birds, both to quench their thirst and to clean their feathers. You can help them out by buying a bird bath, or by making your own – even a plant saucer or an upturned bin lid will do the trick. Just make sure it’s not too slippery or deep. Some stones or gravel in the bottom can help stop birds from slipping.
- Give birds a home – spring is just around the corner, which means many birds will already be thinking about finding a home for this year’s chicks. You can buy a nest box for them at org.uk/shop, or even make your own! There are step-by-step instructions on the RSPB website.
Tammy Bishop, Sales Director at Barratt and David Wilson Homes’ Southampton division said:
“Birds are fascinating creatures, and by making our space as nature-friendly as possible we get to appreciate their mesmerising behaviours up close.
“As a leading housebuilder, we want to work closely with our residents across the Isle of Wight to encourage them to welcome wildlife into their area. The Big Garden Birdwatch is a really fun way for all of us to get involved and learn more about the birds on our doorstep.”
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Adrian Thomas, RSPB’s wildlife gardening expert, commented:
“I’m always blown away by how much people love being part of the Big Garden Birdwatch! Last year about half a million people took part, counting eight million birds. It’s a great chance to hunker down with a mug of hot chocolate and feel part of the outside world – and since it also helps conservation, it really is a win-win for the whole family.”
Barratt and David Wilson Homes are bringing new homes to the Isle of Wight at St George’s Gate in Shide. For more information, visit www.barratthomes.co.uk or www.dwh.co.uk.
To sign up to the event and for more ideas on how to encourage wildlife into your garden, visit the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch page at https://www.rspb.org.uk/get-involved/activities/birdwatch/.
I am sure that the wild birds, foxes, badgers, rabbits, hares, frogs, toads, lizards and countless life that has their homes bulldozed into smouldering heaps, and have their food source from trees, hedgerows and wild grasslands and scrub destroyed to enrichen dev elopers will be so pleased to have ‘one’ of their species recorded by bored housebound people, whilst their homes, and lives are ruined, not for a while but forever.
A few nuts and stale bread, when remembered, will never replace what has been taken from them, and as our population increases, theirs will suffer ever greater harm.
Still, it’ll give the bored kids something to ‘take them off a game’ for a few moments, so sure to be popular with the parents.
How hypocritical to have developers being ‘involved’ clearly a carefully chosen PR stunt to make it ‘look’ as though they ‘care.’
They can then use this skewed data, to then ‘prove’ that more sparrows, starlings, and garden birds are ‘doing well’. YET as many of our rare and most beautiful birds rarely or never frequent gardens like Owls, Nightjars, Nightingales, warblers, woodpeckers etc etc, the REAL loss and carnage will, go, as they wish, UNRECORDED.
Data is used and now collected with the desired ‘outcome’ already sussed to fool the gullible when it is ‘supported’ by those trying to improve their green credentials as a ‘selling point’ in a glossy magazine or flyer.
The dev elopers are hypocrites, telling people to respect wildlife and not throw bricks ant hedgehogs or whatever they say, and then proceed to bulldoze forests, field, and other natural landscapes, to build cheaply built houses and profit
An unlikely and uneasy combination R s p b, and house builders.
I am sure that the wild birds and countless other living creatures that have their homes bulldozed into smouldering heaps, and have their food source from trees, hedgerows and wild grasslands and scrub destroyed to enrichen developers will be so pleased to have ‘one’ of their species recorded by housebound people, whilst their homes, and lives are ruined, not for a while but forever.
A few nuts and bread will never replace what has been taken from them, and as our population increases, theirs will suffer ever greater harm.
Still, it’ll give the bored kids something to ‘take them off a screen’ for a few moments, so sure to be popular with the parents.
How hypocritical to have developers being ‘involved’ clearly a carefully chosen PR stunt to make it ‘look’ as though they ‘care.’
They can then use this skewed data, to then ‘prove’ that more sparrows, starlings, and garden birds are ‘doing well’. YET as many of our rare and most beautiful birds rarely or never frequent gardens like Owls, Nightjars, Nightingales, warblers, woodpeckers etc etc, the REAL loss and carnage will, go, as they wish, UNRECORDED.
Data is used and now collected with the desired ‘outcome’ already sussed to fool the gullible.
Dogpaw, how true your excellent post is.
I don’t need these crooks and poor excuses for so called quality home builders to tell me how or what to do.
We do that daily to keep the birds here while you just take up more land for your greed and profit.
Shame you don’t take more pride in your work and stop building poor quality homes.
Sadly NHBC don’t have the time to check every house you build which they should, instead of 1 in every 5.
Most odd combination.
Good post Dog pawl
Whilst some with vested interests or pure naivety will decry it, saying that woodpeckers and the like do come to their gardens, it is because so much land is being ruined by development, that such woodland birds have little choice or starve.
Akin to only focusing a ‘survey’ on food banks, saying that as more are ‘using’ such, then the human population ‘must’ be doing well.
Yet the real reason is their lifestyle has forced them to accept such, as their living has been taken away as these house builders are doing to all real wildlife, not just a few birds who do thrive from scraps, we, when remember provide.
what a joke you want to help wildlife stop building more bloody housing estates and refurbish the hundreds of empty homes on this island this island is being ruined by greed
Seems an odd combination as others say, most likely just a valuable Public Relations stunt on the part of the two builders.
So the next huge bill board advertising their homes can have a ‘We support the RSPCB’ logo on it and on their other advertising ‘glossy’ material, as they know, that SEEMING to be ‘green’ is a great selling point to ‘this’ generation.
What a fool believes, and there are, thankfully for them, no shortage of such now looking for ‘anything’ green to limit their guilt, and not looking too deeply as to whether it is really justifiable.
I love all wildlife, yet this does have a worrying irony to it all.
Akin to the Labour Party funding a new Synagogue.
A cheap, tacky way of ‘trying’ and likely succeeding into getting into naive peoples ‘good books’ by a cheap publicity stunt, doing something they don’t care about, YET know others do, so, playing to the crowd.
Surprised the RSPB accepted, but in these hard pressed times for charity, beggars can’t be choosers I guess.
Another vile cynical PR stunt from the sector that causes some of the worst environmental damage.