Counting Birds

My New Year's Resolution last January was to count garden birds. Every day I lived at home, with a little help from the other occupants of the house or people who sat on the sofa with me in the conservatory, I made a note of what I saw.

Now there are strict rules about this sort of thing:

1. You have to make a definite identification before registering a sighting.
2. You can only count the maximum number of any one species you see at any one time. So even if three sparrows flying west are replaced by four coming in from the west you can still only count four. The exception is when species have clear differences between male and female - then you know there are two birds not one e.g. blackbirds, house sparrows.
3. The bird must land in or on your property or, in the case of a bird that spends most of its time on the wing (house martins, swifts, swallows), fly directly over the house or garden.

Results tomorrow evening.