Contents:
- Editor's welcome
- Daisi Daniels
- Rochdale’s ‘gothic masterpiece’ Town Hall is being restored to its full glory
- Broadfield Park
- Sarah Fitchett Woman of Rochdale 2022
- Upperbanks
- Jolly Josh charity opens fully-inclusive centre for disabled children
- ’Thank you’ funds raised for hospital by children
- Highest award for Rochdale soup kitchen
- H Bell & Sons celebrate 110 years of business
- The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2022 »
- Gardening tips for Summer
- BES: Delivering industry-leading expertise from Rochdale
- Luxury travel brand eShores turns 15
- This Summer take a holiday from binge boozing
- Permanent eyebrows - what are they all about?
- Guided Walks
- Pineapple upside-down cake and piña colada
- Royal Jubilee recognition for Brad Gartland after setting up local male mental health charity
- Rochdale Lacrosse win David Beesley Cup after unbeaten season
- The earliest days of rugby football in Rochdale
- Highlights of a mayoral year
- Hairdressing trend - Beach Waves
Summer 2022The RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 2022
House sparrows held onto the top spot, but the jay surprisingly flew nine places up the results from this year’s RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch.
This year almost 700,000 people across the UK took part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch , counting more than 11m birds.
In Greater Manchester, the house sparrow took the top spot, followed closely by starling and woodpigeon.
In the UK, the jay moved up nine places to number 23, an increase of 73% compared to 2021 numbers. Each autumn, jays, a colourful member of the crow family, can often be seen flying back and forth finding and hiding acorns to help see them through the winter. These are then hidden in the cracks and crevices of trees, but also in leaf litter on the ground. An individual jay can store around 8,000 acorns each year and many remain buried to grow into oak trees.
The 10 most common birds in Greater Manchester:
- House sparrow
- Starling
- Woodpigeon
- Blue tit
- Blackbird
- Magpie
- Goldfinch
- Robin
- Feral pigeon
- Great tit
There was a small increase in greenfinches compared to 2021, giving scientists a glimmer of hope that this might be the first signs of a population recovery, but only time will tell.
In recent years the greenfinch has suffered a population crash (62% since 1993) caused by a severe outbreak of the disease trichomonosis and, as a consequence, the species was added to the UK Red List last year. This infection is spread through contaminated food and drinking water, or by birds feeding one another with regurgitated food during the breeding season.
Garden owners can help slow transmission rates by temporarily stopping the provision of food if ill birds are seen and making sure that garden bird feeders are cleaned regularly.
Over its four decades, Big Garden Birdwatch has highlighted the winners and losers in the garden bird world. It was first to alert the RSPB to the decline in song thrush numbers, which are still down 81% compared to the first Big Garden Birdwatch in 1979.
This species was a firm fixture in the top ten in 1979. By 2009, its numbers were less than half those recorded in 1979, it came in at 20 in the rankings this year, seen in just 8% of gardens.