Sharp decline in some bird numbers

THE British Trust for Ornithology, normally called the BTO, publishes a Garden Bird Feeding Survey and it makes for interesting reading.

Of course, our own BirdWatch Ireland does the same thing and their results are more relevant to us because there are some differences between British and Irish bird populations and subtle differences in bird habitat.

But what makes the British results interesting is that they are distilled from a much larger number of gardens and they have 40 years of information, the oldest database of its kind in the world. Some of the changing trends in bird populations over 40 years are quite dramatic and unexpected.