GARDEN BIRDS - REPORT from 2025
Sunday 11 January
And so … last year’s birds seen in our garden.
I thought it would be encouraging to write something about the birds that I see in my own suburban garden. I’ve always kept records of the bird that we see, and I share them via eBird, but in 2025 my wife and I decided we would spend one hour each morning, every single day of the year listing the birds that visited. We were spurred into doing this at first because eBird offered a draw to win a pair of binoculars, and yes, we have enough already, just not any made by Zeiss which is the prize we will fail to win but which would complete the set as it were). The draw was for people submitting a daily checklist throughout the year. I don’t know why, but they rapidly changed that to “an average of” 365 checklists in total which is laughably easy for anyone to qualify for.
But first - this is only significant if you know us well, but on 3 January this year the garden briefly hosted two House Sparrows, a male and a female. Twenty eight years ago they nested with us and were regular visitors for several years but the numbers fell off the cliff shortly after and they have rarely been seen since. These were the first since Covid. We enjoyed their appearance a lot, git quite excited in fact. We grew up with gangs of House Sparrows as the background to life, and they are important to us even if they are not native to this continent.
And: I’ll not be going to see this poor creature, close as it is, which turned up in Montreal on Saturday – I must have hundreds of real Euro-Robins on my life list already and I have little wish to add to the crowds of birders that will be crossing the continent to see this sad stray. I doubt it will survive for long, if something doesn’t eat it then the January cold will end its journeying. It is surmised that this bird probably crossed the Atlantic by means of a two week voyage on a cargo ship and was sustained by scraps put out for it by members of the crew. Hence it found its way to Montreal, one of the great port cities on the eastern coast of this continent.
We note garden birds as they pass but we have made it a point during 2025 that at about 7 o’clock while having a morning cup of tea, we would look at the garden and just keep a note of what we saw - consistency and comparability. Here are some observations on the garden birds seen in our suburban garden. The point is that these are birds that live near people and seem to thrive while doing so. When someone says, as they do, “oh, we only have sparrows and blackbirds in our garden” I suspect that means that either they are simply not looking closely enough and/or they have not made their garden appealing enough to the local birds - and it doesn’t take much to entice them.
We don’t live out in the wild countryside or in the middle of a forest tor on the edge of a species rich marsh. Our garden is just one of many in a suburb of the city of Montreal. We knew we have decent range of species and now we have solid evidence. Many of these species could be seen visiting your garden too once you start noticing them.
In the 28 years we have lived here, we have recorded 124 species of birds that were in or seen/heard from our not very large garden - 15,000 sq.ft including the house. That’s a not inconsiderable number of birds. Some of them are quite rare, while others we see right throughout every year. One thing that does attract the birds is that about six or seven years ago we decided we were never going to mow grass again and started to convert our conventional lawn and flower borders into a native plant garden. Native plants provide seeds in season for birds to eat. They attract pollinating insects which birds eat. They provide shelter from predators, which is something all birds need. Native plantings also just look so nice. We also have trees and shrubs - all interesting to a bird trying to make a living.
This following graph shows how the species totals in each year have changed to the extent that in 2025 we recorded a total of 97 species from January 1 to December 31. I was really hoping that we’d make 100 but it was not to be.
Of all the 97 species, this bird is worth mentioning - a Tufted Titmouse. They are not particularly uncommon, other than this far north. According to Birds Canada there are only an estimated 1200 individuals in all of Canada of which this healthy specimen, who first arrived on 20 November, has decided this garden is the place to see out the winter. Coming almost every day at the moment, usually a fast flit from shelter to the feeder, grab the largest peanut or Sunflower seed on offer and high tail it back again. This makes the grabbing of photographs rather chancy.
2025 bar chart for the garden - when were species seen this year?
I, courtesy of eBird, have a chart showing which birds were seen and when. You can view a copy from the following link.
https://ebird.org/barchart?byr=2025&eyr=2025&bmo=1&emo=12&r=L352536&personal=true
🐦⬛ Some birds were seen every week of the year - these included Mourning Dove, Downy Woodpecker, Blue Jay, American Crow, BC Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, American Goldfinch, and Northern Cardinal. Several others almost achieved that status, American Robin for example and House Finch.
🐦⬛ Occasional visits by raptors in search of a meal were made by Coopers Hawk (most frequent), Sharp-shinned, Red-tailed and Red-shouldered Hawks.
🐦⬛ Owls were heard - specifically Eastern Screech owl andGreat-horned Owl.
🐦⬛ We had almost all the Woodpeckers for the area … YB Sapsucker, Downy, Hairy, Pileated and Northern Flicker. Red-bellied Woodpecker was absent but has been seen a few times in earlier years.
🐦⬛ Dark-eyed Juncos were seen every week except from May to mid-September when they were far to the north laying eggs.
🐦⬛ A really good selection of Warblers - 19 species! - made an appearance, mostly during spring and fall migration. You can see the species in the eBird chart via the link given above. The most frequent during 2025 was probably the American Redstart who most years is a blink and you missed it tick.
🐦⬛ Our special friend the Carolina Wren was often seen at the feeders and from late November we had daily visits from a Tufted Titmouse. Both of those are quite unusual birds and I am sure only come because we provide a garden habitat with food and shelter that they need.
🐦⬛ A pair of American Robins built a nest in a flower pot under our front porch and successfully raised three youngsters. This was a delight … though perhaps not for the postman and other visitors who would be roundly abused from a nearby magnolia tree when they turned up.
All of which goes to demonstrate that if you make your garden welcoming, then the birds will visit you. When managing your garden it is good to remember that 95% of native North American bird species exclusively feed insects to their young. Insect populations are collapsing due to human activities, and that means baby birds are also in crisis, by default. Native insects can’t use lawn grass, which is from Eurasia. Sadly it is estimated that over 50 million acres of the US are now under lawn grass … and 50 million acres is 40 times the size of Grand Canyon National Park, the size of the entire country of Panama, 78% of the size of the state of Texas, 37 million football fields and 800 million tennis courts. That’s an awful lot of the world that birds and other wildlife really could make use of given a chance.
** At the bottom of the page is a gallery of photos of 25 of the birds we were visited by in 2025
** None of the photos in my articles are AI-generated (graphics, well that’s quite another thing) and almost always my own. I write the words too.
Native Plant Gardening - a pre-spring taster
We need another two or three months where I live before anything green will be showing and another month on top of that until things start to look promisingly “gardenish”. Some of you live in more favored climates, I know. To encourage gardens thoughts you might enjoy reading this article about a chap who runs what seems to be something rather special when it comes to sourcing the plants we need in our wildlife garden havens:
Wild Salmon and the Environment
This is a bonus post - I found this film to be quite fascinating, but also rather bizarre. The link is to a link I shared earlier in the week on my other website. Worth watching.
WILD SUMMON is an Eco Fantasy film which follows the dramatic life cycle of the wild salmon in human form, while looking at how we treat nature and each other. Narration by Marianne Faithfull … remember her?
https://whilstoutwalking.ca/2026/01/05/wild-summon/
2025 Bird Gallery
Thanks for the restack