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Starlings retain top billing in Orkney gardens

The Starling was Orkney’s most spotted bird in this year’s RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.

Orkney bucked the trend in the latest edition of the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, with starlings coming top of the pecking order here, rather than the house sparrow.

Though the sparrow was the most spotted throughout Scotland overall, Orkney birdwatchers counted more starlings than any other bird in their gardens, retaining its title as the county’s most sighted garden bird.

This is according to results published by RSPB, today, Thursday.

Now in its 41st year, the Big Garden Birdwatch is a chance for people of all ages to count the number of birds that visit their garden helping the RSPB build up a picture of how they are doing. This year, almost half a million people across the country took part counting nearly 8 million birds.

The event, held over the last weekend in January, revealed an average of 21.5 starlings spotted across 85.8 per cent of the 220 Orkney garden birdwatchers who took part. The sparrow, meanwhile, was spotted an average of 15 times across 88 per cent of participants. Other commonly spotted birds in the county were blackbirds, feral pigeons and collared doves.

Keith Morton, senior species policy officer at RSPB Scotland said: “The results of Big Garden Birdwatch are a great way of seeing how individuals counting birds in their garden can add up to some really impressive citizen science!

“You telling us you saw a long-tailed tit in your garden for the first time, helps us work out how they are doing across the country.

“The huge number of people that take part in the Birdwatch all over Scotland helps us get a better picture of our wildlife, so thank you to everyone who joined in, we couldn’t do it without you! And hopefully you had some fun while you were doing it. Enjoying nature is as important as counting it.”