{"id":807,"date":"2019-11-22T21:24:13","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T21:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/southyarewildlifegroup.org\/?p=807"},"modified":"2019-11-22T21:39:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T21:39:38","slug":"garden-birdwatch-bto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southyarewildlifegroup.org\/garden-birdwatch-bto\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning about the state of our garden birds with the BTO"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Over 40 South Yare Wildlife Group\u00a0members\u00a0attended a fascinating\u00a0talk by David White from the BTO’s Garden Ecology team at Poringland Community Centre on 14 October.<\/strong><\/p>\n Rodney Aldis introduced the evening, explaining why gardens are the focus of SYWG’s Wild Patch project and the reason for choosing Poringland as the venue. Poringland has had the lion share of new house building in south Norfolk which means there are\u00a0<\/span>a lot of new gardens in the village. However, only two people who live in those new developments attended so we failed to reach the target audience.\u00a0 <\/span>We need to discuss how we can reach out beyond the already converted if we want to improve our area for wildlife.<\/p>\n David first\u00a0gave an overview of\u00a0the results from the analysis of the recent BTO\/Springwatch national garden survey.\u00a0<\/span>Data from over 221,000 gardens were entered, which is a sample between 1 and 2% of the national total.\u00a0One of the main points\u00a0that stood\u00a0out was that only 41% of gardens had long grass<\/strong> (although there is some regional variation). The percentage is higher in western Wales and parts of Scotland and lowest in central England.\u00a0This is likely to affect the habitats available for insects and other invertebrates.\u00a0The sample is also likely to be biased in favour of wildlife enthusiasts entering their gardens so the actual percentage of gardens without long grass is likely to be lower than 41%. The data is\u00a0still being analysed so we expect to hear more about the conclusions in a few months time.<\/p>\n