a Great Tit; Credit: Roland Felten

The natur&ëmwelt English-speaking Section has announced the results of the nature organisation's annual birdcount that took place in spring.

While most of January felt like spring, the week-end of the garden birdcount was unpleasantly dull and wet. The weather affected the numbers of birds that turned up to be counted, but there were still enough, and enough observers - over 600 in fact - to get a clear picture of the nation's winter birds.

The main finding was the recovery of Great tits and Blue tits from their poor breeding season in 2016, which affected wintering numbers in 2016-2017. Great tits were once again top bird in January 2018, in terms of the proportion of observers reporting at least one in the hour-long observation period.

Blackbirds were almost exactly as frequent, followed by Blue tit, House sparrow and Robin. As ever, House sparrows were the most numerous species.​