Instant Genius - Big Garden Birdwatch, with Adrian Thomas

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

From 27-29 January the RSPB (The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) will invite the nation to count the birds in our green spaces. Adrian Thomas, the RSPB’s chief expert on gardening for wildlife, joins us to explain what one of the world’s biggest crowd science projects has taught us so far and he shares the simple steps you can take to make your back garden more welcoming to birds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Daniel Bennett, the magazine's editor, and today I'm very excited to be talking about the big garden birdwatch that's happening soon. I'm joined by Adrian Thomas, the RSPB's chief expert on gardening for wildlife. He's here to tell us what the UK's biggest crowd science project has uncovered thus far. And he's going to share why our gardens are so important to wildlife, as well as offering some simple suggestions on what we can do to help support words in our garden. garden. If you're interested and it sounds like something you'd like to get involved in,

the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch happens next weekend from the 27th of January to the 29th, and I'll be taking part myself. It's super easy and you definitely don't need to have any prior bird knowledge to get involved. Just head to their site, RSPb.org.org, to find out how to take part. Here's Adrian explaining what to expect. We're RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch into its 44th year. Oh, wow. And every year in the last weekend of January, we invite anybody and everybody to spend one hour counting the birds that they see in their garden

or their local green space if they don't have a garden. It's been incredibly successful. It started out on Blue Peter, actually, as a children's survey. And then we found out that adults wanted to take part two. So it quickly... Yes, indeed. We're always envious of what the kids get to do. Yeah, so it turned very quickly into a very large citizen science project to the point that it is now and has been for many years,

the largest citizen science project running in the UK on any topic and the largest wildlife gardens survey anywhere in the world. So that's lovely. Okay, it's great for us to the RSPB that we get so much data in, but it's lovely that so many people want to take an interest in that and feel that it's worthwhile them spending the hour, counting those birds, and in doing so, creating this snapshot of how well our garden birds are faring. And it's very useful on an annual basis, but it's even more useful. The more years that we do, the more data we've got to compare from one year to the next. And that's what really then begins to highlight the trends,

the changes. Things going up, things going down. And can you give us a context of how important this is, as a study, you've given us a taste of how big it is. Is it used by sort of ornithologists and scientists up and down the country all year? Is it a kind of really key piece of research? I think it's a key piece of research in a couple of ways. There are more detailed studies that go on. For example, the British Trust for Ornithology runs the breeding birds survey, and that sends out surveyors into specific locations following very strict scientific protocols to get us an idea of our breeding bird population. So I think that what the RSPB's big garden bird watch does,

first of all, it does give us an amazing snapshot. When you have got, in the order of last year, we had 700,000 people take part. In the middle of COVID, we topped the million mark for the number of people taking part. So suddenly you get a layer of detail and spread that no other survey can bring, so that's fantastic.

But I never underestimate the visibility element of it either. It is for many people their first step into, citizen science and their first step into nature recording and the visibility that comes from that and the national press always cover in in great detail how well the big garden bird watch does in large part because so many people have taken part that they want to know how their results have translated into into the story of how well our wildlife is faring and it has that beautiful element to it that what they're counting and i know we're going to go on to this later the results that come out can help direct what people then do to change their own spaces, to make them even better.

And the beautiful kind of projection, crystal ball for me looking into the future is there's a point 10, 20 years down the line, where numbers of some species go up because people have done the survey, they've realized what they need to do to try and improve their habitat, and we get some gains on the back of that, and our garden wildlife becomes all the more healthy because of it. Yeah, so it's very unique in that way, and then it's kind of a type of experiment where we can kind of change the results, and that's not a bad thing. Yeah, that's the big hope in all of this. And it's the big possibility of it, too. It's a really big opportunity. So what are the kind of trends that we've seen doing this in the last, well, 44 years, but particularly say in the last decade or five years, what kind of trends emerge out of this data that you capture? I guess you're quite right. In a way, there's some very long-term trends. And so 1979, the first year that it was done,

and over that long time period, we've seen things such as the decline of the song thrush, which would have been a very familiar bird back in 1979, was in the top ten, and that's the lovely thing about Big Garden Bo-Dutch. We can talk about it in terms of toppler pops. And, yes, so many gardens would have had a songthresh in it, and people would have looked out and recognized the brown speckly-breasted bird out in their garden. now it's languishing way down the top 20 and the declines since 1979 and 80% declines.

So four out of every five song thrushes that were in gardens in 1979, now no longer there. But even on a short-term basis for the song thrush since 2012, the last 10 years of the survey up till last year, it was more than a 50% decline just in those 10 years. So it doesn't take very long for really quite substantial, profound changes to be happening in some of our garden bird populations. The two species that really stand out in terms of decline in the last 10 years, a Greenfinch and Chaffinch. And I know that you're familiar, very familiar with both of those. And it was Greenfinch that kicked in first. That was the decline that was first noticed.

So that decline has been going on for a little bit more than a decade now and has been pinned down, very topical in the light of COVID, it's been pinned down to disease and the transmissions of a disease called trichomonosis between green finches. It was thought that it leapt over from the pigeon tribe, pigeons and doves who have long been susceptible to trichomonosis, but suddenly it leapt across the species into greenfinch. and we've seen a plummeting like we've rarely seen for any other species. And are there any definitely, definitely we will definitely get into chicanis and what you might be able to do to help those populations of finches. But are there any positives that have emerged out of the numbers from the birdwatch? Yes, yeah, and that's always nice, isn't it? Doom and gloom is all very well and all very mobilising,

but I think we all need some positive news. There are all sorts of bright spots in Big Garden Birdwatch. Things such as goldfinches have really done well in Big Garden Birdwatch, particularly over the last 10 to 15 years. Long-tail tits, people love them. They're the cutest thing that there is. It's like a tiny little fluffy ball with a long-tails stuck on the end. Flying teaspoons is what people call them,

but my teaspoons aren't fluffy in the way that long-tail tits are. Those are doing well and really interesting to explore. some of the reasons why they should be doing so well. There are some species that people might not be quite so pleased about the rise of the wood pigeon has been dramatic over the course of Big Garden Birdwatch since 1979, a rise of over 1,100%. So 12 times the number that there were back in 1979. And then you get the curiosities, those that might be going up, but now coming down,

or vice versa. Perhaps the biggie on that front is the collard dove. Didn't breed in the UK until the 1950s. Underwent this amazing expansion from its original heartlands over in the Middle East and expanded all the way across Europe in the matter of a couple of decades until it became a really frequent garden visitor

across almost the whole of the UK. Numbers absolutely ballooned and now they're starting to go down again. So it's not always a straight-up. up or straight down, it can be a more complicated picture than that. So in the case of the tits and the goldfinches, which I've been able to track many goldfinches to my garden and they're beautiful, kind of ornate little things, what do you think has been the story behind their success at the moment? With goldfinches, in fact, as with

almost all the birds, you find that the reasons, it would be so lovely to pin it down to one thing, and it's often quite a complex of things. With goldfinches, there may be a climatic factor in place. A lot of goldfinches historically would have migrated south to the continent, not all of them, but many of them would have done, and would have struggled to find enough seed in the British landscape, which was why that behaviour was in place. But with the emergence and diversification of garden bird feeding, then we saw things such as the introduction of Niger seed, which is perfect for goldfinches. They've got a very fine beak there, perfectly adapted to things such as probing into the seed heads of teasels and pulling out a seed from the teasel that looks rather

like a Niger seed. But once Niger seed was cultivated on a kind of commercial basis, suddenly there's this mass seed available to goldfinches. I remember a time when bird feeding was peanuts, still in their shells, strung up on a bit of elastic hung from a bow or from a bird. table and birds really needed to work hard to get into that food. It was quite an energy demanding thing. This is what you might call inconvenience food that we were putting out at that stage. And now we're at the point where you can not only put out shelled peanuts, but you can put out kibbled peanuts, little bits of peanut, or you can put out sunflower hearts so birds don't need to mandipulate. Love that word.

They don't, yeah, a bit long for scrabble, but you can give it a will. that effort of taking a seed and having to wriggle it with your beak and somehow extract the goodness from out the middle of it, I don't know how they actually do it a lot of the time. It's pretty clever with a hard beak to be able to manipulate a seed in that way. Now a lot of birds know that they can get their kibbled peanuts, they can get their sunflower hearts, they can get real variety, they can get it all year round because the advice changed from 20 years ago,

which was feeding winter, to now a recognition that, Often the point of greatest need is the tail end of the winter. It's early spring when all of the natural food is really at its lowest point. But birds are trying to get into condition for singing and breeding and laying eggs. So all of those factors, I think, have really helped the goldfinches. And then once one bird or one population starts to adopt that behavior, then it spreads through that population and that they learn. They learn to find the good food sources.

Yeah, I've noticed the blue tits and occasionally a long-tailed tips, they're much higher, but they do follow in the footsteps of the finches, at least in my garden. And so is that a good opportunity there? Is that why the garden birdwatch is this time of year? Is that because birds are sort of just going through winter, getting ready for spring, so they are going to be at the feeders, and that's the kind of most convenient time to spot them, I suppose in summer it's quite hard to see them in the trees.

My understanding is that 1979 survey was set up because that was the point in the 70s when you were encouraged to feed birds. So that was the point where you're looking out of the window, the trees are bare, and you've got birds coming to your feeders. For many people these days, they'll have birds on their feeders all the way through the year. But as with all good science, you stick to what you started with to create the consistency of data going through. And for many people, well, you haven't got that desire to get out in the garden if it's cold or if it's wet. So the chance to sit with your feet up with your slippers on,

cup of tea in hand, watching the birds out the window. And I know how much pleasure that gives so many people as well. So I think that's been a factor in its success that, almost like the mindfulness of just taking an hour out to watch those birds seems to appeal very greatly to people. Yeah, I scribbled that word down here in my notes. that I wonder if its popularity is also down to the sort of mindful act of just, you know, I personally in the morning sit with a cup of coffee and just watch them at the bird feeders squabbling and doing their thing. And I think I wonder if that's been part of its appeal in recent years. And I do exactly the same every morning as well. It is my little soap opera

out the window. Who's in, who's emerged overnight? Have they all survived? At a moment, I've got a great tit that's got a white tail coming into the garden, so has white tails survived the night. And every day, there's something happening out there, and I lose myself in a little bit of it for a while. And it certainly works for me. And I love the fact that the big garden bird watch is available to everybody. You don't have to pay to do it.

You don't have to be a member to do it. It's something that anybody and everybody can do. It's inclusive in that way. And before we go and talk about sort of the things you can do to, you know, sort of invite wildlife in. I just wanted to then ask about the chaff finches and the green finches. So on the one hand, you have the sort of proliferation of, I suppose, of, you know, readily available, easy to eat food, fast food maybe for birds. Why has that not helped the likes of chaff finches or green finches, do you think? And it probably did help them in the early days.

and people were encouraged, left, right and center, put out food for the birds. And we always had the message there of keep your feeders clean, consider hygiene out there, consider hygiene for yourself and for the birds. What we're finding is that some of these diseases are most readily transmitted at bird feeding stations. And it's kind of quite easy to imagine why, with lots of birds gathering in one place. Now, that happens in the countryside. You only have to think of like a berry-filled tree, or a stand of weeds that's gone to seed,

that will draw in birds. But they'll quickly exhaust that and have to move on to another site. And I think our human tendencies are, once we've set up a feeding station, we keep it there and we don't move it at all. And it's probably nicely placed for viewing from the window. It's had this side effect of just pulling in lots of birds

who are desperate for the food. So in the first place, we're doing good Because the countryside, to a large extent, as a generalisation, is poorer for food than it was in the past. That's why so many of them are making a bee-line for gardens. But now that recognition that we need to be even more mindful of hygiene within the garden situation. So the advice on that has really ramped up in only the last few years, the advice to move your feeders from time to time, to clean them on a regular basis. And if you see birds which look sick or diseased, and particularly with trichomonosis,

what you see is fluffed up birds which are listless that don't fly off when you step out into the garden, if you see that, to actually take the drastic step of stopping feeding for a while to allow those populations to disperse. I think that the modern food types, the fast foods, as you so wonderfully describe them, they're a good thing because it means less spillage. So if you're feeding from a hanging feeder, trichomonosis tends to be transmitted through the birds struggle to swallow. It's a disease that constricts their ability to swallow.

So they're often salivating, and that saliva can be the transmission method for the disease. So if birds are gathering on the floor underneath where food is being dropped because it's taking time for birds to pick out the seeds that work best in their bills, then that's a problem. But if every bit of food is readily swallowable, then there's less lying around on the food underneath,

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focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound. and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. Yeah, so unfortunately I had exactly that scenario where we spotted a little chaffinch fluffed up, sort of really out of sorts, to the extent where we were able to go and pick it up in a little tea towel

and take it to a rescue centre where they told us that it had Trichomonis which is also called canker, I believe. Some people might have heard it. And there, yeah, you know, the sunflower seeds were popular with the goldfinches,

but they do have a habit of spitting them out quite frequently or bits of them. And so I think, and once we spotted that, we essentially took everything down, as you say, let the birds disperse for a while. That was about a couple weeks ago. But I think Niger seed might be a good root back because they're a little bit tidier readers with those.

But also I realise lessons like moving your feeder around, as you said, because the ground stays wet and that you came for so long. And it's a disease that moves through moisture, doesn't it? Once the ground dries up, it kind of doesn't tend to linger too often or for too long, I believe. And it means that bird baths are another prime transmission point. So recognizing the need for that hygiene, if you You're going to feed birds because you've got that instinct to try and help. It's a brilliant instinct, but it now needs to be added to that mix is a real diligence when it comes to hygiene around bird feeding. And feeders that can keep your food dry and also another lesson I learned, which we did do, to be fair, but don't fill your feeders too much too full so that you're kind of

encouraged to change them often. Yes, indeed, yeah. that message of only put out what gets taken is a very good one. And it's a shift in our bird feeding behaviour as a nation. We're a brilliant nation at putting out food, but it just needs to have a little bit of a shift in how we do it now. And this, okay, yes, I do need to move the feeder from time to time. I do need to make sure there's not this constant gathering point. Maybe our experiences with COVID show us the kind of little lengths that we need to go to just to ensure that we're not inadvertently causing harm through our kindness.

So on the flip side of that, how important do you think a garden can be in the picture of supporting wildlife? What kind of evidence or what do we know about how vital our gardens can be? I love that as a question, because if you went back to when I started in wildlife-friendly gardening, 20 years ago, then we were still very much in the era where the attitude was that wildlife was found out in the wild places and any creatures that lived in a garden were the common and garden wildlife. The term even existed back then, common and garden wildlife, as if it was like, didn't really have that much value to it. And there were various things that happened. I'm going to pick out

a couple of quick examples for you. One was an amazing lady called Jennifer. O'Nes in Leicester, who had wonderful connections with all sorts of experts in different groups of wildlife. And she was no mean wildlife expert herself either. And over a period of 30 years, she sought to find and identify every species she possibly could in her garden, whether it be birds, dragonflies, beetles, bees, whatever. In those 30 years, if I can remember correctly, I think she felt. found 2,673 wildlife species in her garden, of which some were new to the UK. They were little

parasitic wasps, but they were new to the, nobody had found them ever before in a little suburban garden in Leicester. And I believe one of which was new to science, had never been seen ever before. And this kind of started a revolution of, oh right, we don't recognize the value of gardens for wildlife because nobody's ever really studied it properly before. It was taken up by my second example is Sheffield University, particularly the work by Dr. Ken Thompson that he did there, which was called the Biodiversity in Urban Gardens in Sheffield's project, which those of you who are very quick, mind of will notice, is the Bugs study in its acronym. And he and his team and his students went out and studied gardens everywhere. And it kind of reinforced the message from

Jennifer Owens that our gardens are far richer than people realize them to be. And I think the Big Garden Birdwatch then feeds into this as well because the song thrush and the decline it's had in gardens. Well, that's a decline that has been just as marked in the wider countryside. The decline of house sparras, the decline of starlings. They're all red-listed species. They're all species of major conservation concern, and yet their primary populations are in gardens. you only have to think about Swifts or House Martins. They rely so much on the urban environment.

So increasingly there is this recognition that gardens have a double value for wildlife. One is that they genuinely have wildlife value. And the second is the connection with wildlife that people have. It's the place where the vast majority of us have our daily contact with nature and benefit from it. And when you bring those two things together, it really elevates the importance of gardens and their wildlife, I think, in human life. It gives us an insight into, you hear about the climate and the nature crisis. Well, that's what you get to see a bit of outside your door,

but you also get to see a bit of what you can do to put it right. What if you feel like you maybe live in the sort of heart of an urban jungle, and you know, you're looking around, there's not very many, very many, you know, green gardens or with lots of vegetation. Can you do, or even actually I suppose there might be, there probably are people listening who might live in apartments. I myself only got my first garden six months ago. Obviously they can take part in the big bird watch,

like you said in public parts, but can they affect change and can they be a vital sort of island in their locations? Yeah, and I think the urban jungle that you're just trying is the concrete jungle, isn't it? It's the dead. Yes, it's the dead jungle. I believe quite firmly, after having spoken to so many people over the years,

done so many talks and so much research on this, that everybody has a part to play in this. Now, that's not to say that if you're in an apartment, you have a roof garden or you have a balcony garden, that you're certainly not going to get the range of species that you would if you had a large country garden, and each success that you have is going to be hard won. Every butterfly that visits, every bee that visits.

But what we're finding out, again, because there's been this upsurge in research into the urban environment, once it's begun to be recognised for the value that it has. After all, the gardens in the UK are estimated to cover 460,000 hectares. Huge. It's absolutely huge. It's two and a half times the area of RSPB nature reserves that we've got out there of that kind of order of scale. if we all do our bit, all play our part, it can all add up into the hole. I'm a realist. I recognize that not everybody is going to get out there and do everything possible in their space for wildlife. And those spaces have to perform loads of functions for us as well. But as many people as possible doing a

little bit is genuinely going to have an impact, particularly when there is such a problem across the landscape as a whole in terms of species declines. And even on a balcony, there's plenty you can do to put plants for pollinators and have a balcony that is buzzing with bumblebees and solitary bees and many other creatures too. And the thrill that I see people get when they take a seemingly barren little place and convert it and do what they can to make it for wildlife and then get some successes there, yeah, their joy is unbounded. I imagine if this is someone's first garden bird watch, I imagine there's a bit of a competitive element. you count a few birds and you probably think oh i'd like to up that by next year and i'd like to

really yeah see how many see how high we can go what would your starting steps be where would you start to try and in to obviously want to say it's good for all wildlife but we're here talking about birds to encourage more birds into the garden and the brilliant thing i guess is that the things that you do in the garden to benefit all wildlife will have an effect on birds because they're top of the food chain. So even if your target is birds and increasing birds, doing things that will benefit a whole range of wildlife will actually feed into the mini ecosystem that you create. And I think at its most simple, I have a number of key things that will have that broad range effect. And the first one for me is always about plants,

which anybody who's a gardener will go, okay, you're giving me permission to grow as many plants, as possible. Oh yes, plants, plants and more plants. Thank you very much. And that includes trees, shrubs, climbers, flowering plants, whatever you can do to green up the space is going to be so much better than whatever happens to grey up the space. Anything that puts in place tarmac or concrete or decking or plastic grass, any of those things are going to effectively seal the surface of our world and take it down a less biodiverse route. So plants are a great starting point. Water is, always invaluable in the garden environment for wildlife. For birds, it's bathing and drinking, but it's such a hot spot for so much life in the garden. And I'd like to think that every garden

could potentially have, if not a mini pond, which would be the most rich habitat water-wise, at least a bird bath in the garden is a great starting point. I think recognizing the value of plants when they die, so as well as growing plants, don't have to be green finger, just give anything a whirl, Trees want to grow, plants want to grow. But when trees shred their leaves or you prune a plant or an annual has finished, that is gold dust once you've finished with it. And I'm always surprised how many people are quick to put that in the green bin and send that material away.

Because it's a breeding ground for all the detritivores that eat that material, all the woodlice, and that then fuels all the food chains above that too. So I have my log piles and stick piles. and compost heaps, and I see that as a gift from the garden, all of that material. Embrace some of the decay. Yeah, absolutely. Gardens, I think we have to recognize, are often quite young habitats.

So birds that like to nest in holes, for example, whose original habitat would have been mature woodland, then they often don't have those holes. So adding supplementary nest sites for birds to mimic more ancient habitats is a good thing, and that can be your sparras and your starlings and your swifts and your house martins just as much as your tits. And then adding the supplementary food, but with all the caveats about hygiene that we've talked about, my next on the list is ensuring that you minimise as far as possible pesticide use, because pesticides are very much about taking out the

base layers of the deck of cards, of the castle of cards of life, and you take out the base layers, then that card castle is going to fall. And if I was to add a final one for folk, I'd say be ambitious. I think nature needs us to be ambitious these days. Yeah, those people who I've seen who've really gone for it in a garden, it really does have an impact. And, yeah, there are wonderful ways to, you know, you put up a bee hotel, why not put up three?

Put up a bird box. Why not put up three bird boxes for different species? Not planted a tree before? Do it. Honestly, it'll want to grow. So a couple real quick questions there, perhaps quite personal ones, because as someone who's just started doing this myself in my garden, there can be quite a dazzling array of bird feeders and bird tables and bird houses and burned things,

which is good in a way, because it shows there's an appetite for this sort of thing. Have you got any tips there on the kind of foods to pick and the kind of feeders you should be looking for? Does it even matter? I might, as I like to do, over thinking it. It does matter, and I think that you do pay for what you get with these things, and for many people trying to ensure that they feed the birds, rather than necessarily the grey squirrels, may be a key consideration for them.

And, yeah, to see pounds and pounds worth of bird food going down the squirrels next isn't always what people want to see in their garden. So I think that hanging feeders are definitely great for birds, particularly in light of the diseases that are out there. If you do feed on a flat service, then you have to be extra special careful about hygiene because that really is pulling birds into a close place where they can defecate and the saliva issues can occur.

And if you have a squirrel issue and don't want to feed the squirrels, then having one of the squirrel buster type feeders, which are kind of weight-loaded, or you can use those with a baffle that goes over the top of it to exclude the squirrels. So I think considering all those things is really worth, while, when it comes to bird boxes, my key targets at the moment are those birds which aren't doing so well at the moment, house sparrows, starlings, which need a slightly bigger hole than you

normally get in the bird box for the house sparrows. You need a 32mm diameter diameter hole for house sparrow. And when you get to a starling, it really is like a bird box on steroids. It's a 45 millimeter hole for starlings. And given that the starling decline is 82% since the beginning of Big Garden Birdwatch, I'd love to see that. Yeah. And 1979, it was kind of like almost like an irritation species. It was number one in the charts. My mum is swarmed by them in her garden. And this is going to lead me to a question. And it drives them mad because they're quite greedy. It's quobbly. But with some absolutely stunning song. And they are quite beautiful close up. I think the coloration and the plume. image is incredible. But I know personally they give her a headache. So I'm going to definitely

feed on that she's helping a species at risk in decline. But it's a little lesson there in sort of, you sort of have to just go with the flow and not just think about that, you know, she comes to my house and she said, oh, you're so jealous. You've got all these goldfinches and actually be sort of, you know, be ready to unfortunately feed all those wood pigeons that tend to squabble at the bottom. Is that something you encourage? Or are there certain species, I suppose, like rats that we need to maybe just be mindful of when we're doing all of this? I think there's a mindfulness in whatever we do, and there's a personal choice element here too. So if people are absolutely thronged by Starlings, then they have the choice, should they wish to, to get things such as the Guardian

feeders, which are, you get the perspex tube in the middle, but then you get a wire cage over the outside, which only allows the small birds in. My feeling is that those who currently have lots of starlings, given the calamitous collapse in their populations, they're going to miss those starlings if those starlings go. And I've worked really hard. I've been in this garden for eight years now, not a starling to be seen for the first four years. And I've now got my starling boxes up, And last year I had two pairs of starlings. And the joy that they bought from the song and from that plumage, the name itself means little thing covered in stars.

That's what Starling means. And I can't tell you the pleasure that I've got of them being back and just that cocky, chirpiness that they bring to the garden. But yes, it's something that I think all of us, when we're feeding, when we're creating the garden, we can choose and we can adapt our garden to fit what we're trying to do. I work quite hard in my garden to improve my butterfly populations. I know they're very attractive and immediate species, and I love seeing them,

but you plow your effort where your interests are. And I think what will happen and what is happening, so many people are embracing wildlife-friendly gardening these days. It's gone from being niche a little bit odd 20 years ago when I started to now every programme that's on gardening just has to mention it. It's what we now do. Every Chelsea Show Garden talks about what it's doing for wildlife. So it's gone mainstream, and I'm delighted about that.

But it still means that each of us can do it in our own way to fit everything else that we need our gardens to be. This isn't about making part of your garden good for wildlife. It's incorporating wildlife throughout your garden as well as the things that you need your garden to be. And each of us is so individual, though we're all doing it our own different ways. And that is some of the wildlife glory of gardens, the diversity of habitat. that we've created is one of the reasons why gardens are such a great place for wildlife. It's such a key place for common things like the Blackbird, one of the most beautiful songsters that we've got.

In Victorian times, Blackbirds were almost exclusively a woodland species, and then they found that our garden environment, with its scattered trees and scattered lawns, is like, it's like a strange open woodland that has turned out to benefit and support Black but it's in a way like almost no other habitat. Is there a bit of a misconception around gardening for wildlife, then it means just letting your garden go to the wild and just leaving it be and long wild grass and brambles? Is that how it goes?

It is a misconception. And when I started, the concept of wildlife-friendly gardening immediately evoked in people's minds, messy, scruffy. If you want a messy-scruffy garden, you can do that, it's probably going to have plenty of value for wildlife, but if every garden was just abandoned, it would be a mass of bramble and nettle probably in only a few years. And those rules of what to put in for wildlife, plants and water,

you can put them in the way that you want to. Wildlife doesn't mind symmetry, wildlife doesn't mind straight lines. You can have a longer area of grass in your lawn, but you can cut neat edges around the edges of it. So it kind of like picture frames, your mini meadow, your pop-up meadow. So there are so many ways of having an attractive garden that's still good for wildlife. Pollinators, they love flowers. You can fill your garden with those plants that are rich in nectar and pollen and produce the most colorful garden. So there are

so many ways to create a wildlife rich garden. They can all fit with our needs within the garden, and you can make that garden to fit your style, whether you want a cottage garden style or a formal garden style. It's just following those key rules of a plant-filled, water-filled, food-filled and shelter-filled garden for wildlife. If you can achieve that in whatever way you want to, you'll be doing a great job. That was Adrian Thomas there, the RSPB's chief expert on gardening for wildlife. Again, if you want to find out how you can get involved in the big garden birdwatch, head to rspb.org.uk. It's super easy to take part and I think it's a great activity to do with the kids.

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