After watching an interesting documentary on common birds and having a couple of Great Tits nesting 1m away from my kitchen window, I developed a sudden passion for common birds 1month ago and here I am: hi everybody!
So here's my question: at what time of the day can you see the broadest range of birds in London? (I'm more interested into variety and opportunities than looking for one specific bird)
I know what is recommended, dawn and dusk, but it's not what I'm observing and I wasted several sessions done too late during the day, but maybe it's me?
My experience is that birds are quite active/visible before 10am (before too many people woke up). After 10/11am, you need to move to more isolated places. Starting from 6/7pm, it's getting more and more quiet and difficult to find a lot of birds. Ok you have a lot of Carion Crows gathering, Black Birds singing and Common Swifts eating insects, but globally, dusk doesn't look like the right time to me. So I don't understand why it is recommended to go birding at dusk? Today I just wasted my time from 8pm to 9.30pm at Alexandra Park to see pretty much nothing.
Places I went to (I'm using the GoBird smartapp)
Gillespie Park, Woodberry Down Reservoir, Finsbury Park, Clisshold Park, Waterlow Park, Alexandra Park, Abney Park, Richmond Park, Lee Valley from Hackney to Totenham, Totteridge Valley/Darklands Lake, Hampstead Heath
(I want to explore Cheshunt, and go back to Richmond Park and Totteridge Valley that I overlooked at dusk)
So here's my question: at what time of the day can you see the broadest range of birds in London? (I'm more interested into variety and opportunities than looking for one specific bird)
I know what is recommended, dawn and dusk, but it's not what I'm observing and I wasted several sessions done too late during the day, but maybe it's me?
My experience is that birds are quite active/visible before 10am (before too many people woke up). After 10/11am, you need to move to more isolated places. Starting from 6/7pm, it's getting more and more quiet and difficult to find a lot of birds. Ok you have a lot of Carion Crows gathering, Black Birds singing and Common Swifts eating insects, but globally, dusk doesn't look like the right time to me. So I don't understand why it is recommended to go birding at dusk? Today I just wasted my time from 8pm to 9.30pm at Alexandra Park to see pretty much nothing.
Places I went to (I'm using the GoBird smartapp)
Gillespie Park, Woodberry Down Reservoir, Finsbury Park, Clisshold Park, Waterlow Park, Alexandra Park, Abney Park, Richmond Park, Lee Valley from Hackney to Totenham, Totteridge Valley/Darklands Lake, Hampstead Heath
(I want to explore Cheshunt, and go back to Richmond Park and Totteridge Valley that I overlooked at dusk)
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