Here's how the bird survey works...

I walk my dog, Oscar, in Hadley Woods most days: usually early morning or late afternoon. If we have time to visit at least the eastern woods, the lake and the meadow then we'll be looking for birds as we go. Why those three areas? They represent the main biomes of the woods and offer a chance to see the (almost) full range of birds. The exception is the common over in Monkey Hadley, but the only birds that you will see there more often than the rest of the woods are pied wagtails, so add a few to the tally for them.

A typical walk takes around 30-40 minutes, so what we're not doing is waiting in any one area to capture every single bird that might be there. If there's a single kestrel hanging around in the woods, we won't see it, but then neither would most people visiting. So the survey isn't exhaustive but it is indicative of what you might expect to find in the woods on any day you might visit. Chances are there are wrens in the woods every single day, but if we neither hear nor see one then we won't wait around until we do.

By keeping the surveys short, we can do them multiple times a week, every week of the year.

There are many birds in the woods that are very easy to see with no equipment, especially on the lake. Some very distinctive songs and calls too. But to help us along, we use the Merlin app as we walk through the woods. This does a pretty good job of identifying birds by picking up and interpreting their many noises. But it's not foolproof - I've seen it think it heard a hawfinch (it was a robin), a rook (scared heron) and a little owl (man shouting at dog) - so any reading is taken with a pinch of salt. If it's a new bird and it seems reasonable once I've reviewed the recording, I might put the bird in the list of Unverified Sightings, but it won't go down as an actual sighting until I've seen the bird and am satisfied it was there.

If you look at the list of bird sightings here, you'll notice that the numbers of sparrows, starlings and rock doves is very low, despite these being very common birds around here. Hadley Woods is surrounded by residential areas and, for the most part, these birds stick to the safety of the houses and are not seen or heard within the boundary of the wild woods. That's the measure for the recordings on this site.

For a bird to be counted it must have been seen or heard within the road boundary of the woods. Flying over counts. Here's an example: for the first five months of recording the birds, I hadn't seen or heard a single rock dove within the woods. Stock doves yes, rock doves no. Often when I exited the woods at the Cockfosters end, I would see them perched on the roof of a nearby cottage, but that didn't count (outside the boundary). On 4th October 2024, as the doves were pecking around on the road, a car passed them, forcing one of them off the road and into the woods. And with that, it went onto the list.

That's how it's done. See you in the woods,

Paul