The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch took place at the end of Jan and we swooped on the chance to settle down with a cup of hot chocolate and monitor the birds in the Brack garden for an hour. This is the world’s largest wildlife survey- last year 519,000 people across the UK took part and a massive 8,262, 622 birds were recorded — wow something to Tweet about!

Those of you who fluttered on by to get involved really got stuck in and made pots of bird cake- we mixed together suet and fat to keep our feathery friends full of energy, and mixed seeds full of natural oils, we then moulded the mix into plastic cups with a string threaded through to hang them outside.

Bird feeding fact!! Sunflower seeds are a great food all year round but be careful with chunky mixes of nuts- they are only suitable in the winter, in the spring the chicks may find the chunks too difficult to swallow and choke.

So there we nested, snug in the Orangery, binoculars and cameras at the ready…our first visitor was a cheeky, and very hungry, blue tit. Beautifully streaked with yellow, blue and green this little chappy was not shy and took full advantage of the new bird feeder. For the next hour we witnessed Robins, Great tits, Dunnocks, Coal tits and Blackbirds- we were getting in quite a flap! Once the hour was up we recorded the results and let the RSPB know what we had seen.

There are loads of one off events to get involved in at NTU, keep an eye open on the sustainability events page, from NTU markets, Fairtrade Fortnight to International Earth Hour and if there is something that you would like to see but isn’t currently set up let us know!

-Thank you to Laura Green, who is an Environmental Engagement Officer in the NTU Environment Team, for writing this blog post!

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