Best Bird Garden 2011 Voting

CHOOSE YOUR WINNER

It's time to vote for your favourite gardens as the search for Britain's Best Bird Garden draws to a close. Below, we've listed the 12 finalists, a summary of the garden in the finalists; own words and a list of birds seen.

You can vote for up to THREE gardens.

Voting closes on Wednesday 21 March. The winner will be announced in the May 2012 issue of Bird Watching magazine.

Now choose your three favourites…

The place was empty when we bought it, overrun and too messy even for birds! In just over a year we have enticed birds back into the garden from dawn to dusk. The 'buffet' in the feeding garden consists of 17 different feeders and is placed nicely infront of my 'looking' window! 18 nest boxes have been installed. I managed 17 different species on my BGBW and new birds are apprearing all the time, infact today I saw my first Reed Bunting - in my garden!! My garden is not finished by a long shot. Who knows what will visit in the next year, I'll have my camera ready! My garden birds are worthy contenders for this award. 

My garden will never win 'Best Garden in Bloom' it's deliberately overgrown & chemical free. Located in land-locked Bedfordshire, it's the first port of call for birds escaping the sea of lifeless cereal surrounding our plot & whether visitors or residents, forms an important refuge.

I have no control over the sterile mono-cultured prairies but do in our garden, although there is a constant bitter, battle between my idea of a species rich heaven (I grow cabbages for caterpillars) & the wife's manicured bowling green mentality.

Whatever the season this garden punches well above it's size. I have engineered a variety of nest sites & boxes & over 20 species breed, varying from Kestrel to Garden Warblers & this year 20 young Swallows successfully fledged reinforcing those in the local area.

Migrants feasting on insects include long staying Redstart & Nightingale, but Winter heralds the star attractions. Hundreds of Finches, Buntings & Sparrows including 65 Tree Sparrows - prompting some local birders to proclaim the garden as a important Wintering site.

Above all this garden belongs to the wildlife & they know it, some birds even bring their own food to eat undisturbed alongside us, a small, shared, Shangri-la.  

We are fortunate to have a large garden of 2.5 acres in a rural location. It has lawns, mixed hedges and a wooded area. In our 20 years here we have removed a large number of conifer trees and replaced some with Birch, Oak, Ash and Rowan. This allows the field layer to thrive which is cut annually. We have built 3 ponds which attracts frogs, toads and newts and an occasional Kingfisher. We have over 40 nest boxes and a breeding species list of 23 over the past few years and includes Goldcrest, Spotted Flycatcher, Moorhen, Mallard, Kestrel and Tawny Owl. Our garden list is 73 and includes Hobby, Woodcock, Hawfinch, Little Egret and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. All our changes and care of the garden are taken eith a view to care for the wildlife that currently uses it and to encourage more to visit. No pesticides are used and birds and fed all year. We have been lucky enough to have had a pair of Red Kites to scraps on odd occasions. We think that we are bird friendly enough to be considered for your competition. 

I have seen 85 bird species in and around my garden. I promote bird feeding and wildlife gardening in our local village magazine so my garden should be a great contestant. Some quotes:

you would be amazed what is going on in just about every garden in Snitterfield.

Winter is a good time to start feeding birds since berries and fruit are running out in many places. There is a lot of advice on Internet of what feed to buy and where to position the feeders, but as long as there is a variety and that you continue to put out food until spring, you should see lots of birdlife. At my feeders I had 15 different birds last weekend Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Jackdaw, Collared Dove, Dunnock, Robin, Blackbird, Blackcap, Starling and House Sparrow.

Birdfeeders should be cleaned every week since there is a parasite killing off Greenfinches. If you are lucky you may see the Sparrowhawk come in for a kill around the feeders this bird has a different interpretation of bird feeding.

I can now add Siskin, Lesser Redpoll, Tree Sparrow and Pheasant at the feeders.
 

We have a medium sized garden here in Devon, and added trees and plants over the years to encourage hoverflies, bees and wildlife including frogs, toads and a slowworm too. The garden is vibrant with wildlife throughout the year, and there's a compost pile and lots of areas for wildlife to hide away and flourish.

A few years ago, we began to encourage birds in the garden, and it's now grown with five feeding areas that suit our feathered friends that visit daily. The greenfinches and goldfinches prefer the seed feeders at the end of the garden, the bullfinches and tits like the feeding areas closer to the house. We have another seed area to the left of the garden which the visiting winter brambling favour. We have areas on the path where we scatter ground food for the blackbirds, robin, wagtails, thrush and dunnock and more. Last year the sparrows arrived and now have a feeding area too, near to the old greenhouse, without it's door and a few panes of glass missing, which they enjoy going into for a dust bath in the soil. We record and share their comings and goings on our gardenbirds blog at www.gardenbirds.wordpress.com. 

YouTube Video: http://vimeo.com/19863817

I have always been passionate about wildlife and one bird feeder in the garden has never been enough some women buy handbags and shoes. I buy bird feeders and bird food! One of my friends once commented, You don't need a feeder for each bird, Kate they can share!
In the last year and a half, I started putting up some nest boxes with cameras and became captivated with being privy to the previously hidden lives of my common bird visitors. Over the last year, I have installed cams all over the garden, giving an amazing insight into all sorts of visitors; wood mice, voles & shrews in mousecam, a fox family with cubs on my foxcam, regular hedgehog visitors to hedgehogcam. With so much going on and so much interest in my projects, I started my website and started to live stream my cameras. I have been astounded by the support, interest and friends I have made.
I work hard to make my garden attractive to wildlife. I have installed numerous nest boxes, not only on my land, but also on surrounding land; kestrel, tawny and barn owl boxes and I have plans for lots more come & visit www.wildlifekate.co.uk
 

In 1997 John and I, having taken early retirement from our respective jobs, bought a cottage in the country. The cottage wasn't large but it came with a surprising 2.5 acres of land. This was our retirement project - to transform a somewhat neglected garden into a haven for wildlife, with year-round interest. It had been divided up into separate areas and we developed the cultivated part, put in a fairly large pond, turned one rough field into a wildflower meadow and the other into a "secret garden" of grass paths and flower beds. The bluebell wood has been left to its own devices. 

I never used to be a birder. I used to be a tele addict.
Fate decided that a house further up our street became available. The garden backed onto the local woods. So my fiance and I knew it had good birding potential.
The first priority was to clean the garden up, making some new bug hotels and putting bird feeders and a bird bath in. Just as well, as we didn't know the worst winter in decades was about to hit!
The night before we moved I filled all the new feeders, and went home. Next morning we arrived to find the garden a mass of birds. Every species of tit and finch were there! Just when didn't think it could get better, a pair of nuthatches appeared!
We have recorded 34 species of bird here in six months, including Woodcock, Tawny Owl, Brambling, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and a Goldcrest on Christmas Day!
I used to be a tele addict. Now I watch natures dramas play out from behind my patio window in glorious high definition and 3D. I have improved my photography and ID skills no end from the living room chair.
I am now a birder.
 

In 1984 my husband and I moved into a former Coastguard Station. It came with half-an-acre of land - a long, narrow, unfenced strip that had primarily been used for growing cabbages. Bare earth. No flowers, no hedges, no trees: nothing you could call a garden. Birds didn't visit us, and why would they? There was nothing to attract them.

Things are very different today. The native mixed hedge we planted back in the 80s now houses dozens of nests, and birds sing from the oaks, field maples, silver birches and other trees that we brought home in the back of our car all those years ago. Our bird boxes are used by robins, wrens, blue-tits and great-tits, and our two bird tables are never quiet for long.

We're not tidy gardeners: we don't cut back plants at the end of the season, and birds feast on the seedheads and the insects that visit them. Goldfinches, blackbirds, song thrushes, yellow hammers, chiffchaffs, even a great spotted woodpecker - they love the organic garden we've created.

And of course we love sharing it with them! 

I am fortunate to live in a beautiful part of mid-Wales and since I moved here in 2005 I have tried to attract birds to my garden in particular encouraging them to nest. I have an acre of land with mature trees, shrubs & hedgerows, a lawn, a vegetable patch, a small meadow and a bog garden with stream all bounded by pastureland. I feed the birds all year round providing seeds, nuts, fruit, mealworms & suet products plus kitchen scraps and water. I have built and erected nest-boxes over the years and this year was lucky enough to have both Redstarts & Pied Flycatchers successfully raise broods in two of these whilst another pair of Pied Flycatchers was successful in a natural hole in my Walnut tree. Forthcoming nest-box projects include Tawny Owl & Treecreeper boxes. Other birds nesting over the years have been Pheasant, Wood Pigeon, Pied Wagtail, Nuthatch, Blackbird, Song Thrush, House Sparrow, Robin, Wren, Dunnock, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Greenfinch, Goldfinch and Blackcap. Many interesting species visit, listed below. Birds seen from the garden include many Red Kites & Ravens, Peregrine, Curlew, Goosander, and a single Goshawk. Your species spotted field is too short. 

Our cottage bird garden is in the Gloucestershire countryside, adjacent to the Lower Woods nature reserve. As keen gardeners and nature enthusiasts we created a haven for wildlife.
Our first task was to build a natural pond to attract insects and amphibians which is now home to newts, frogs, fish, toads, insects and the local heron.
The flower borders have been established with many roses, shrubs, poppies, foxgloves, various flowering perennials, local wild flowers and grasses. Parts of the lawn are left to grow, flower and seed naturally. The hedges of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, bramble and ivy are home to several birds, such as wrens, sparrows, tits, robins, and blackbirds. Swallows nest in the garage and ring necked doves in the carport.
Last year we rescued a pair of doves and they lived in a hanging basket until they fledged.The more unusual birds are spotted Woodpecker, Green woodpecker, kestrel Sparrowhawk, and from our garden we can hear the nightingale and cuckoo sing.
We enjoy feeding and watching the birds which fill our garden with life and activity.
We would like to be considered for one of Britains best bird gardens, which would give us great self satisfaction.
 

I can't say I remember what our garden was like when we moved in, 14 years ago. Then again, I was only one! I'm told it was a slither of lawn down the side of our neighbours tipping area that backs onto a small copse. Since then, things have changed. 7 years ago, we negotiated some land at the bottom of the garden, grandly named The Woodland honestly, it's just a collection of ash and oak trees now supporting bird and bat boxes. Two log piles are heaped up there, one which is favoured by our resident Wren. Last year we sowed a wildflower meadow, while further up the lawn, a multi feeder offering mixed seeds and peanuts, fat balls and Niger seed provides a hub of activity, next to our wildlife pond which we secretly started when our dad was out!
To date, we have recorded 48 species of bird in the garden: Nuthatch, Redpoll, Collard Dove and Siskin most days, with Greenfinch, Great-Spotted Woodpecker, Song Thrush, Goldcrest and Tree Creeper occasionally. At night, we have Tawnies calling from the woodland and Woodcock flushed out. Other species fly over: Buzzard, Peregrine, Raven and even a Red Kite this March!