Injured and
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If you need help with a sick, injured or orphaned bird then please contact the
RSPCA or a vet., not the RSPB.
Our group does not have the facilities or experience to help you. The welfare of individual birds is outside the scope of the national RSPB. If you see a young bird that appears to be orphaned it is usually better not to pick it up. Check there isn't some predator such as a cat nearby then keep your distance and give its parent a chance to return. See also the RSPB main website. |
School and
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All the available information about our group can be found on this website.
If you wish to use it as part of a school or college project then please feel free to do so.
Much information about the aims and work of the RSPB national organisation is available from the RSPB main website. You can also find conservation news and issues there and links to other conservation organisations. |
Wildlife Careers | Please refer to the RSPB main website. |
Wildlife Law | Please refer to the RSPB main website or your local Police Wildlife Liaison Officer. |
London Birding
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See our list of London birding locations
or the Ornithology section of the LNHS website via our links page, or the London Wildlife Trust's website. |
Field Guides |
A popular choice is
"The Mitchell Beazley Birdwatcher's Pocket Guide"
by Peter Hayman, published by Mitchell Beazley.
It is small and light yet covers all species likely to be seen in the British Isles.
For each it gives several illustrations and shows comparisons with similar species.
Overseas visitors in particular should be aware that it uses the common names and
it does not give Latin names.
For detailed advice on distinguishing between certain similar species see "The Macmillan Field Guide to Bird Identification" by Keith Vinicombe, published by MacMillan. The "Collins Bird Guide", text by Svensson and Grant and illustrations by Mullarney and Zetterstrom, claims to be the most complete guide to the birds of Britain and Europe. It gives detailed notes, distribution maps for Europe, full English names and the Latin names. It is available as a field guide in hardback or paperback or as a reference book in a larger format. Illustrations and text are superb. There are many other books on British and European birds. Look in the Natural History section of any good bookshop or try searching online booksellers on the web. |
Night-time or
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There is one British bird which can be heard singing at almost any time, even when all other birds are silent.
A Robin ("European Robin") will sing to hold a territory through the winter months,
and it will often sing at night too, especially where street lights or security lights are left on.
So far as we know, singing at night doesn't seem to harm them, despite the extra energy they must be expending.
Their winter song can be described as thinner and more wistful than the full summer song, but still a delight to hear.
A bird singing in London in the early hours of a winter morning, before daylight, will surely be a Robin.
And if the line "a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square" was inspired by a real bird then that too must have been a Robin.
You can find a short sample of Robin song by going to the RSPB main website then looking up Robin in the "A to Z of UK Birds" and clicking on "Audio/video". |
What happened to
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For the latest news go to the
RSPB main website.
Many people have noticed the disappearance of House Sparrows from parks and gardens over the past few years, but House Sparrows have also declined in the countryside where they used to be found in farmyards and on cereal crops. Many other familiar species are in serious decline too. The current status of all British bird species is well documented in Chris Mead's book "The State of the Nations' Birds". The disappearance of House Sparrows is a very obvious and alarming signal that something is going seriously wrong, at least for that species. Several possible explanations for this decline have been put forward, including:
Currently, the most popular explanation appears to be a combination of loss of sparrow nesting sites as buildings in and around towns are renovated, together with less cereal food being available to sparrows around farms, which would also affect town sparrow populations when they migrate to the countryside for a period each autumn. However, this possible explanation is not yet proven. In fact, data gathered by the London Natural History Society over many years shows that numbers have been declining over a much longer period, since at least the 1950s, so maybe the sudden decline we are seeing today is just the highly visible final stage of a steady progress towards extinction. It seems the decline in sparrow numbers is significantly more serious within London than in the surrounding areas or in the country as a whole. From the recent London Bird Project survey by the British Trust for Ornithology the early results suggest that an important factor might be the loss from parks and gardens of areas of large dense shrubs, whether for tidiness or as part of a makeover or following concerns over public safety. Dense shrubs, particularly thorny evergreen shrubs such as pyracantha growing against a wall or fence, offer protection from cold and from predators and they are a favourite roosting site for sparrows. Meanwhile, as reported in the Summer 2006 issue of the RSPB's "Birds" magazine, a research project around Leicester found that many house sparrow chicks starve during June and July before leaving the nest. A lack of insect food, such as beetles, craneflies and aphids, is a real problem in areas lacking deciduous trees, shrubs and grass. The RSPB London House Sparrow Project has been experimenting with supplementary feeding at a number of sparrow colonies. Providing mealworms for the sparrows to feed to their nestlings did result in more fledglings being reared successfully per pair of sparrows, but there was no evidence that the extra fledglings led to an increase in the size of the next year's adult breeding population. It wasn't clear whether the extra fledglings were moving off to breed elsewhere or were not surviving the winter. The latest stage of the project is therefore providing supplementary seed at the same sites in winter, to see whether the combination of both foods will result in more adults in the following spring. It seems unlikely that there will be any official action to reverse the decline until the real cause has been established. Meanwhile, we can each try to help:
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