Mike Toms - Garden Birds

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF WilliamCollinsBooks.com This eBook edition published by William Collins in 2019 Copyright © Mike Toms, 2019 Photographs © Individual copyright holders Mike Toms asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work Cover art by Robert Gillmor A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Source ISBN: 9780008164744 Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008164768 Version: 2019-04-03

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO CHRIS MEAD AND DAVID GLUE,

WHOSE KNOWLEDGE OF GARDEN BIRDS

AND PASSION FOR THEIR STUDY, IS MUCH MISSED.

*

The aim of this series is to interest the general

reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing

the enquiring spirit of the old naturalists.

The editors believe that the natural pride of

the British public in the native flora and fauna,

to which must be added concern for their

conservation, is best fostered by maintaining

a high standard of accuracy combined with

clarity of exposition in presenting the results

of modern scientific research.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO CHRIS MEAD AND DAVID GLUE, WHOSE KNOWLEDGE OF GARDEN BIRDS AND PASSION FOR THEIR STUDY, IS MUCH MISSED.

About the Editors EDITORS SARAH A. CORBET, SCD DAVID STREETER, MBE, FIBIOL JIM FLEGG, OBE, FIHORT PROF. JONATHAN SILVERTOWN PROF. BRIAN SHORT * The aim of this series is to interest the general reader in the wildlife of Britain by recapturing the enquiring spirit of the old naturalists. The editors believe that the natural pride of the British public in the native flora and fauna, to which must be added concern for their conservation, is best fostered by maintaining a high standard of accuracy combined with clarity of exposition in presenting the results of modern scientific research.

Editors’ Preface

Author’s Foreword and Acknowledgements

1 Gardens and Birds

2 Foods and Feeding

3 Nests, Nest Boxes and Breeding

4 Opportunities and Risks

5 Behaviour

6 Birds, Gardens and People

7 Species Accounts

References

Species Index

General Index

The New Naturalist Library

About the Author

About the Publisher

GIVEN THE EXPLOSION OF INTEREST in garden birds, their habits and feeding since the 1960s, this is an addition to the New Naturalist Library that was crying out to be written. Many, perhaps most of us, are familiar with a range of garden birds on a day-to-day basis. That range may be large or small, but familiarity engenders an interest in how the birds are faring and an enthusiasm for taking part in censuses and surveys: ideal seeding ground for what are now called citizen science projects. Against this background, the Editorial Board was fortunate to be able to call on an author tailor-made for the task in Mike Toms. Mike will be familiar to NN readers as the author of the very popular and very readable text on owls (NN 125, 2014). He has spent most of his working life with the British Trust for Ornithology. Over and above his personal fascination with owls, he has been involved in the organisation and analyses of the various BTO Garden Bird studies and, thus, is the ideal author for this authoritative text.

The text opens with an analysis of the role of gardens in the ecology and general prosperity of our commoner land bird populations and an assessment of the diversity that we have created. Interestingly, though we think of gardens as ubiquitous, the land area that they occupy, at just over 400,000 ha, is only slightly larger than the county of Suffolk, and less than 10 per cent of British land area with some form of statutory protection. That said, the potential for interest and fascination that they offer, far outweighs those statistics. In the second chapter, Mike Toms explores the phenomenal growth of garden bird feeding since the end of the Second World War and the equally amazing diversity of foodstuffs now available, particularly seeds. Long gone are the days of throwing out a handful of scraps from the table to satisfy our feathered friends!

Subsequent chapters cover the provision of nesting opportunities, nest boxes and other aspects of the breeding season ( Chapter 3 ), and the aptly-named ‘Opportunities and Risks’ ( Chapter 4 ) outlines the disease health hazards (sometimes devastating) that birds face at feeding stations. Enthusiastic gatherings squabbling at feeders become vulnerable to lurking sharp-eyed predators like Sparrowhawks Accipiter nisus. Chapter 5 , ‘Behaviour’, emphasises the opportunities (and privileges) on offer in gardens, to watch birds interacting at close quarters, and demonstrates how simply watching can develop into (equally enjoyable) studying, far more easily than in the general open countryside. Equally absorbing and fascinating are the varied aspects of garden bird watching in Chapter 6 , ‘Birds, Gardens and People’, which, among other things, emphasises the many benefits, including to physical and mental health, that people can derive from the interactions.