Garden Bird nesting schedule

Wed 7th March 2012

Watching the blackbirds nest-building this last fortnight has made me wonder which of my garden birds will be nesting next! A bit of research suggests that it’ll be dunnocks, robins, song thrush and long-tailed tits which have a main laying period of late March.

Robert Burton’s ‘Garden Bird Behaviour‘ (2005) includes a summary table describing laying seasons, clutch sizes, incubation periods and number of broods for many of our garden birds in the section on Raising Families. I’ve used it to make my own simplified calendar of what to look out for in my garden:

• early March:blackbirds, collard doves
• late March: dunnocks, robins, song thrush and long-tailed tits
• early April: wren
• mid April: magpie, starling, house sparrow
• late April: blue-tit, great-tit
• May: chaffinch, greenfinch

Nesting time relates to diet – omnivores such as blackbirds and thrushes are less constrained so start early, whilst blue-tits time their hatchings to take advantage of May’s abundance of moth caterpillars, and seed-eating finches wait for food plants to flower and set seed. Last of all are birds of prey such as sparrow hawks, whose nestlings are reared on the fledglings of smaller birds!

I don’t have any decent trees in my garden, so I’m unlikely to attract chaffinches or greenfinches, but I have a nest box with an entrance hole to suit blue-tits or great-tits, and plenty of dense shrubbery that might suit wrens, robins or dunnocks. The blackbirds are a good start!