looduskalender.ee

The Estonian Ornithological Society thanks all who took part in the winter garden bird survey on January 29th and 30th. - TALV 2011 was very popular among participants and in spite of the unfavourable weather last year’s level was surpassed. 1134 bird friends contributed their observations from 948 sites all over Estonia.

According to many observers the number of birds and the diversity of species were hampered by the above-zero temperature, the strong winds and blowing snow during the weekend. Because of this the average number of birds observed at an observation site was noticeably smaller than last year, limited to 33 individual birds (2010 average: 43 individual birds).

During the survey, held for the second year in Estonia, 30 973 birds of 58 species were observed. As expected the most niumerous species was the great tit that was present in 95% of the locations and accounted for nearly one quarter of the total number of birds. The greenfinch took the second place, followed by tree sparrow, bullfinch and house sparrow. The frequent occurrence of blackbirds in winter was again confirmed, as well as the abundance of chaffinches and the wintering of starlings; of winter rarities the robin, collared dove and middle spotted woodpecker were seen.